Q: New mac connects to time capsule but isn't seeing old backups
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Sep 25, 2016 5:53 PMby LaPastenague,Since El Capo the OS has much tighter security.
You generally will not be able to simply use any old Time Machine backup in the way you did in the past.
Backups made by different computers need to be used via migration assistant.. not simply opened in TM.
However you can still copy a file or folder you need manually via Finder.. mount the sparsebundle and access it.. if you have issues copy the folder in the TM screen and then paste it from Finder.. There are various ways to trick it.
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Sep 25, 2016 6:11 PMby k9pal_k,I am not looking to restore from the TM. I just want access to my old backups to be able to grab something n case I forgot to migrate it.
I don't know what SPARSEBUNDLE is. I guess I will have to look that up. Whatever that is, will then let me use FINDER to access and copy files??
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Sep 27, 2016 8:49 AMby LaPastenague,HelpfulA sparsebundle is your backup on a network drive. That is how Time Machine works.
When I open my TC in finder.. I see a list of the available backup sparsebundles.. Click any of them.
It will then mount to Finder.. then click the Time Machine Backup .. and track through to the file you want.
Please notice the file name might not show sparsebundle but the kind does.
Open any of them.
Time Machine Backup will then mount under devices.
Click on that.
Lo and Behold your backups from some old computer.
Click on that..
Click on that.
And you will finally reach your files.
Click on latest and there is the standard listing of all the files and folders on your computer as last backed up.
You must select the partition or disk first.
Click that and it will open the listing.
Click on users.. to get the folders for each different user.
Then open the files of that particular user.
Click into the folder structure to find exact files.. or select the entire folder and restore it.
It takes much longer to read than to do.
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Sep 27, 2016 9:01 AMby k9pal_k,I don't see that at all on the new mac. On my old one (the one that made these backups for the past few years) I can see various files and folders. On the new mac this is all I see is:
The MacBook Pro directory has only one directory called BANDS in it, with pretty much nothing in it.
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Sep 27, 2016 2:11 PMby LaPastenague,You should not be able to see bands. Something has gone wrong and I am unsure what. From windows I will see bands.. but not from a Mac.
Do you have the TC plugged by ethernet into the new computer.. disconnect it from the network if you have to. Make sure you are running a user with full admin rights on the computer.
No luck then you will need to do the following.
In order to access the backups you are going to need to do it the hard way.
Plug a USB drive into the TC (with same size disk as TC or at least all the files used).
Open the airport utility, go to the disk tab and archive the TC to the USB drive.. this will make an exact copy of all the files including the backups.
This can take up to 24 hours or more to do if you have a full 2TB.
Once completed plug the USB directly into the computer and attempt to access the sparsebundle. If that still fails you will need to do another step.
Using your old computer, partition the USB drive to whatever number of backups you have.
Instead of copying the sparsebundles open them in Finder and copy the backups.backupdb to each partition.
You might still need to repair permissions but you should then be able to open these in the new computer.
