Cant restore Time Machine backup after Yosemite

[Maydon0z]

Hi folks,

I made a backup of Mavericks through Time Machine and went to upgrade to Yosemite. Then in Yosemite I also made a backup to Time Machine. However now I installed Mavericks again because I was having the CPU whine, no matter what I tried.

I want to restore my system with the Mavericks backup but it says that the time machine backup is from a newer version...? Can I just manually delete the Yosemite backup in order to have access to the Mavericks backup?

 

[Gochugogi]

I just "uninstalled" Yosemite: hated the iOS feel, slow startup and my fav app, Bias Peak Pro, was broken. However, I reapplied Mavericks from a cloned drive as I don't trust TM for such matters.

Can't you specify a restore from before you installed Yosemite? If that doesn't work, you'll have to reformat the drive, install Mavericks from scratch and use the apple migration app to transfer your apps, docs and settings.

 

[Maydon0z]

I have installed Mavericks but when I try to restore it says that I can only restore if I upgrade to a newer version of Osx.

When I installed Yosemite I made another backup with Time Machine on the same Time Machine drive as I had my Mavericks backups.

I can restore my Yosemite and Mavericks backups when running Yosemite. But on Mavericks I am unable to restore anything. Migration assistant wont let me chose the Time Machine drive at all. The drive has a yellow exclamation mark on it.

 

[Ledgem]

I'm afraid you're stuck. This seems to happen with every OS update: they make some tweaks to the way that Time Machine works (or maybe it's an artificial limitation...) and once you upgrade and let the new OS have access to your Time Machine drive, no older OS will be able to read those backups.

It won't help with your problem now, but some advice for the future: before doing a major OS upgrade, use SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to make a complete copy of your main hard drive, and store it on an external hard drive. That's your ultimate restore point that the OS can't mess with (unless it gets erased). When doing the actual upgrade, shut off and/or disconnect your Time Machine drive, and don't reconnect it until you're satisfied with the overall operation of your new OS. Unless someone knows of a special modification that can be made, there's no going back once the new OS modifies your Time Machine archive.