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OSX 10.8 migration assistant does not find my usb time machine disk

Hello.


I have got a late 2011 Macbook Pro and I have just made a fresh installation of Mac OSX 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion). I would like to use migration assistant to restore user accounts and data from an external USB time machine disk. Backup was made on the same computer with the same OS. The only thing different is the internal HDD that I had to replace.


The USB disk is connected and well mounted in the finder. The time machine backup data is accessible.


User uploaded file


User uploaded file


Yet migration assistant keeps searching for a data source and does not find it ("Searching for other computers").

User uploaded file


I had the same problem a couple of months ago when restoring data on a brand new iMac from a firewire external hdd time machine backup. But the backup data came from an older iMac and I had finally made it by connecting the two computers with a cable. Migration assistant did find the data that way. Unfortunately, there is no way to use such a trick this time.


Does anyone has an idea that could help me ?


Many thanks for your help ! 🙂


Pascal

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Nov 26, 2015 10:59 AM

Reply
4 replies

Nov 28, 2015 1:58 AM in response to Eric Root

Many thanks Eric, very interesting links. But I am afraid this won't help me in this case.


It appears that there is a bug in Time Machine on OSX Mountain Lion 10.8 (still not corrected in 10.8.5). The following directories "System", "Library" and "Applications" do not appear on my time machine backup and that is why the backup is recognized neither by setup assistant nor migration assistant whatever OSX version is used on the target system 😠


User uploaded file


The only solution in this case is probably to connect the former HDD through an external interface and to use migration assistant. I will try this ASAP.


Best regards.


Pascal

Nov 29, 2015 12:19 AM in response to flying pascal

Just an update.


  1. A bug in Time Machine on OSX Mountain Lion 10.8 (still not corrected in 10.8.5) causes sometimes the following directories "System", "Library" and "Applications" not to appear on Time Machine backups. 😐
  2. These backups are therefore unusable as data sources by setup assistant or migration assistant. 😠 Nevertheless, they could be partly usable through "Recovery disk assistant" but I did not completely test that one.
  3. I finally manage to restore my data by booting on the new HDD and connecting the former HDD to the Mac through an external adapter. The former HDD is then recognized by migration assistant as a data source. 🙂
  4. The time machine bug is corrected on later OSX systems (verified on an OSX Yosemite 10.10.5 iMac). ℹ


Cheers

OSX 10.8 migration assistant does not find my usb time machine disk

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