permissions issues Win10

Today, i decided to manually browse through to get the few items i needed from file history, then delete the remaining file history.

Deleting the file history is easy.. you can erase the TC as you noted near the bottom. Honestly that is the best way because you will continue to run into the problem in the future without using a Windows formatted virtual disk.

So forget about the delete problem for now.

It is getting those files you need that is crucial.

I am trying to understand your rather lengthy but excellent post.. just need you to clarify.

1. all file history is present from previous machines as this one is new.

So you have no files on the current machine or backups to the TC of the current machine? You are trying to restore to a different machine your old files, iTunes etc?

I don't use windows much these days but is it possible to use file history to recover the entire previous backup? Perhaps to a hard disk plugged into your computer.. then you can sort through the files and grab what you need. It is just that file history permissions might be handled at machine level.

Apple is now pretty smart at detecting that you are coming in from a different machine. And will block permissions to that different machine.. even if you use the same username and password.. Mac people are also having issues with permissions. (in the new world of ransomware.. protection against unfortunate events is almost as painful).

An alternative is to copy the entire backup folder (directory in Windows Speak) from the TC to say a USB NTFS formatted drive plugged into your computer.. if you cannot do it from Explorer there are other tools like robocopy or better rsync from linux world.

Is there a way around this, without formatting the entire storage? (Note I set this up with Apple's associated software originally, but I do not have that installed now. I do not think this is the issue, because ALL files from file history were placed there when the software was installed, but only some files can be deleted.

Now I am a bit lost.. you said previous machines.. here this is singular. A machine that had the airport utility loaded.

It helps me to know if you had multiple machine or just one previous machine. Are there multiple backups from multiple machines or just one?

4. TC drive access requires a username/password, and i'm the only user of the drive.

There are a few different levels of security on the TC.. are you using the top level .. with accounts??

Using accounts can be very tricky.. I would turn it off. Go back to using the device password.

If you don't remember you will have to install the airport utility on something. What about iphone or ipad? If you have one you can download the iOS version airport utility which will be very useful.

Using the airport utility on the PC can also help.. there is a disk access aspect to that software.. and I would not discount the impact of not using it.

The issue of getting your files out might be helped by a person with a Mac.. invite a friend with Mac laptop to drinks and get them to give you a hand. They can extract the entire folder and copy it to your windows machine. Getting it out of Mac OS formatted disk (which is TC internal drive) and onto a PC formatted disk.. where your local machine has control over permissions can make life much much easier.

What I recommend then is you erase the TC via the airport utility.

Now the question of future use.

Backups on a disk (internally in the TC) that is in a format windows cannot even read... not a great idea.

And windows is pretty much ignored by apple with latest versions of bonjour for windows or airport utility being win7. I doubt they are going to bother renewing them.

It is really going to give you hassles.. especially at exactly the point you need the backup.. to discover it is not working. That is why you always backup natively..

There is a work around.

From windows create a virtual disk. And this can be formatted NTFS and controlled by the windows machine.

All your files and backups etc.. load them into the VHD.

Since your camera does not have issues with the TC and your computer does not have permissions issues with the videos that can continue to run as now.. the camera will not be able to view inside the windows virtual disk. And all security can be controlled by the windows machine.. so there is no need to use accounts.. I recommend you don't.

Here is original post where I worked out using VHD from win10.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7634997?start=0&tstart=0

A decent NAS is not over expensive.. and is much better much faster much more secure than a TC.. and in the windows world my recommendation is to stick to stuff designed for windows.