Time Machine help needed -- sparsebundle weirdness

[akadmon]

My daughter's MBP HD died and I had it replaced by Apple. Prior to the failure, the computer was being backed up via TM to a USB drive connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station. I'm having a hell of a time recovering data from this TM backup, and I don't know what's going on. Connecting the drive directly to the MBP does not show the sparsebundle file in the Finder, even if I rig the Finder to show hidden files via a Terminal command. I can see the sparsebundle file just fine if the drive is connected to the AEBS, but every time I attempt to restore via Migration Assistant I lose the connection part way through, and the only way to reconnect to the drive is to reboot the AEBS, at which point I have to restart the restoration all over again (only to see it fail after a few minutes!). I've called Apple support, but they're clueless.

EDIT: Problems solved by connecting the MBP to the AEBS via an ethernet cable.

 

[akadmon]

Last chance to impress the forum with your tech knowledge! Anyone?

 

[sidewinder]

Have you tried copying the sparsebundle from the AEBS to another, local, drive?

Then you could run Migration Assistant on that copy....you should have the connections issues at that point.

S-

 

[satcomer]

Then read this MacOSXHint's hint and make sure you follow the discussion on the hint. There aerwe some good posts in the disscussiion that you might find.

Plus, did you use the OS X disk (of the version of OS X you are using on that drive and boot from the CD and restore from the Time Machine backup should be the menu items.

 

[akadmon]

Have you tried copying the sparsebundle from the AEBS to another, local, drive?

Then you could run Migration Assistant on that copy....you should have the connections issues at that point.

S-

I have tried this (numerous times), but the only way to see the file is to have the drive connected via the AEBS, and then when I try to copy the file I lose the connection.

 

[akadmon]

Then read this MacOSXHint's hint and make sure you follow the discussion on the hint. There aerwe some good posts in the disscussiion that you might find.

Plus, did you use the OS X disk (of the version of OS X you are using on that drive and boot from the CD and restore from the Time Machine backup should be the menu items.

It's an impressive thread, but after reading it for the past 15 minutes I'm starting to get more and more confused. It seems this thread deals with resuming backing up to an existing TM backup. My problem is a little different. I can't access the backup file long enough to complete the restore process without losing the connection to the AEBS, and I can't see the sparsbundle file unless my TM drive is connected to the AEBS.

I have not tried to do the restore via the Install DVD. I'll try this tonight, though I'm not sure why this should solve the problem, since the only difference is that I'd be running Migration Assistant off the DVD instead of my MBP.

 

[akadmon]

OK, seems my problem has been solved (fingers crossed) by connecting the MBP to the AEBS via an ethernet cable and disabling Airport on the MBP. Apparently Migration Assistant does not work well over a wireless connection, which in my case seems to be a little dirty. What I don't understand is why weren't there issues with creating the TM backup in the first place, since it was being made over a wireless connection? I don't recall seeing dropped connection errors.


UPDATE:
I was able to restore from the TM backup over an ethernet connection successfully.