Migrated to Monterey from Mojave Time Machine backups no longer accessible

[eddiel]

Hey All

Having a weird issue with my upgrade (iMac 2017 4.2ghz i7).

I did a clean install ie wiped HD then installed Monterey so I didn't try to reinstall from Time Machine. (I generally do a clean install and then reinstall programs as needed, either by reinstalling fresh from an installer or, sometimes, just restore from TM back up.)

After I upgraded to Monterey, I set the TM disc to be the same one that I used in Mojave, which is formatted as HFS+.

All seemed ok but when I enter TM, although I can see that that there are backups going back months, I can't actually access any of them. I can't roll back to previous backups. All I can see if the current window with the restore button greyed out. If I click the back arrow or use the right hand margin on the screen it does nothing. It stays on the current screen.

I'm wondering if this has something to do with the drive being formatted as HFS+ rather than AFPS.

Anyone have any idea as to why the old Mojave backups are recognised as existing but not accessible?

 

[Rich B22]

Hey All

Having a weird issue with my upgrade (iMac 2017 4.2ghz i7).

I did a clean install ie wiped HD then installed Monterey so I didn't try to reinstall from Time Machine. (I generally do a clean install and then reinstall programs as needed, either by reinstalling fresh from an installer or, sometimes, just restore from TM back up.)

After I upgraded to Monterey, I set the TM disc to be the same one that I used in Mojave, which is formatted as HFS+.

All seemed ok but when I enter TM, although I can see that that there are backups going back months, I can't actually access any of them. I can't roll back to previous backups. All I can see if the current window with the restore button greyed out. If I click the back arrow or use the right hand margin on the screen it does nothing. It stays on the current screen.

I'm wondering if this has something to do with the drive being formatted as HFS+ rather than AFPS.

Anyone have any idea as to why the old Mojave backups are recognised as existing but not accessible?

I'll be honest, I don't really understand the intricacies of TM and that's why I use Carbon Copy Cloner for my main backups. That said, I've used TM to restore individual files successfully and find it of value.

I do a clean install on either of 2 iMac's twice yearly when I migrate from one residence to another seasonally. Assuming you have the TM disk attached, after installing macOS, it should ask you if you want to use that disk for backups. It should also ask if you want to inherit (or something like that) the previous TM backup to the new installation. Sometimes, even with telling macOS to inherit, I run into the same issue as you are. What I have found is that the files are there, you just have to access them differently than from "Enter Time Machine".

From Finder, click on your TM disk and you should see a list of each date's TM snapshot. You can then click on whatever file/folder you want restored and drag it to where you want it.

Hope this helps and good luck

 

[TriciaMacMillan]

As far as I know, Monterey Time Machine supports only APFS. If you are speaking of a locally attached disk, then I'd assume that TM has changed the file system to APFS. However, I'm not sure if TM is able to convert the HFS+ file system to APFS or if it has to reformat the disk.

Is the drive still HFS+ now? If so, are you sure TM has successfully made any backups to it.

If you are talking of a network drive that you backup to, however, that's a different thing.

 

[eddiel]

As far as I know, Monterey Time Machine supports only APFS. If you are speaking of a locally attached disk, then I'd assume that TM has changed the file system to APFS. However, I'm not sure if TM is able to convert the HFS+ file system to APFS or if it has to reformat the disk.

Is the drive still HFS+ now? If so, are you sure TM has successfully made any backups to it.

If you are talking of a network drive that you backup to, however, that's a different thing.

It is still in HFS+ format but I don't think that's the issue since I selected it to be the back up in Monterey. If it didn't back up to HFS+ I figure I'd have received an error message about the format.

The back ups are definitely there. I can see them via Finder and I can see that the TM can see that they are there as well. It's just that, when in TM, I can't actually access them.

I recon it might have something to do with the "inherent backups" mentioned in the post above. I won't have time to look into if further for a few more days.

 

[Brian33]

All seemed ok but when I enter TM, although I can see that that there are backups going back months, I can't actually access any of them. I can't roll back to previous backups. All I can see if the current window with the restore button greyed out. If I click the back arrow or use the right hand margin on the screen it does nothing. It stays on the current screen.

I had this happen to me, once upon a time. Unfortunately I don't remember how I resolved it, but IIRC it was solvable.

Maybe it happened when I renamed my boot disk? Once in the TM interface, try hitting Shift-Command-C (the Finder shortcut for Go-->Computer). See if an older boot-disk is shown in the list...

I'm wondering if this has something to do with the drive being formatted as HFS+ rather than AFPS.

I don't think that's the issue. If you continue with a previous HFS+ backup, TM will continue to use it in that format. If you start a new TM backup, it will always format it as APFS.

 

[Taz Mangus]

As far as I know, Monterey Time Machine supports only APFS. If you are speaking of a locally attached disk, then I'd assume that TM has changed the file system to APFS. However, I'm not sure if TM is able to convert the HFS+ file system to APFS or if it has to reformat the disk.

Is the drive still HFS+ now? If so, are you sure TM has successfully made any backups to it.

If you are talking of a network drive that you backup to, however, that's a different thing.

From Apple:

Time Machine still supports backups on Mac OS Extended format (Journaled), Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled), and Xsan formatted disks.

Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac

Use Time Machine on your Mac with a Time Capsule and with USB and Thunderbolt disks.

support.apple.com

 

[theMarble]

I had this happen to me recently. I updated from 10.14.6 to 12.3.1 however once I found that Monterey was a terrible OS, I decided to go back to Mojave using my Nightly backups of Mojave in TM. When I went into Recovery mode and tried to restore it, once I clicked restore, the whole computer would freeze up and it never changed.

Got into contact with Apple Support, they didn't provide any help so I had to wipe the drive and reinstall a fresh copy of Mojave.

 

[McScooby]

32 bit vs 64 bit?

 

[theMarble]

32 bit vs 64 bit?

macOS hasn't supported 32-bit apps since Mojave 10.14.6.

 

[McScooby]

macOS hasn't supported 32-bit apps since Mojave 10.14.6.

Yeah, but OP is jumping from Mojave to Monterey & wondering why Mojave back-up in TM won't open in Monterey. I'd reckon if they updated to Crapalina as an interim step then Monterey might see it (universal stuff & all that).

 

[Sumo999]

APFS is fundamental to the function of Time Machine.

 

[eddiel]

As a temp solution, I went back to Mojave.

I'll try again at a later date.

 

[JRobert@macrumors]

After a clean install from Mojave, this worked for me:

sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups/Backups.backupdb/Andromeda/

, or generically:

sudo tmutil inheritbackup <path to TM backup set>