Catalina broke all Time-Capsule backups before the update: devastating bug

[Jespertje93]

Just a quick note:
After the update to Catalina all my earlier Time Capsule backups are unreachable. No only mine, but also those from other people I know. When I go into Time-machine, the timeline only goes as to the day I upgraded to Catalina.

Strange thing: the backup file on the HDD from the Time capsule is now named '.backupbundle', where before Catalina it's name was '.sparsebundle'. MacOS also doesn't recognize '.backupbundle' and won't let me mount it. So all of my earlier backup files are not available to my anymore.

I think this is an absolutely devastating bug, and I really don't understand why this is not a 'big thing' at this moment? I'm sure many people (into the millions) just use Apple's supplied time-machine software, and it looks like as if all their backups are gone (or at least unreachable) at this moment. People just seem not to be aware of this issue yet.

Any others with the same problem?

 

[fatihayoglu]

Hi,
It looks like I can access my TM backup pre Catalina install.
BW,
Fatih

 

[elliekelly]

Any others with the same problem?

Same here. I've seen a number of people dealing with the same issue but I've yet to see anyone mention they've found a solution.

Edit: I just went into TM > Open TM Preferences > Select Disk... > selected my Time Capsule then "Remove Disk". Then I re-started my machine and went back into TM > Open TM Preferences > Select Disk.. > selected my Capsule (and my backups are all encrypted so I also made sure to check the box for "encrypt backups") and entered the TM password. I then got a popup saying the Time Capsule disk already contained encrypted backups of the MacBook and prompted me to: (1) Erase the Encrypted Backups, (2) Start a New Backup, or (3) Continue with Encrypted Backups. I selected to continue with encrypted backups and was prompted to enter the password for the backup file (nb: not the same as the password to access TM disk). The backup occurred (only ~800MB and my laptop's entire drive is 350GB so the differential backup is definitely working. I'm 100% confident the backups are still on my TM and since I didn't get any errors on backing up I'm reasonably confident they're readable/not corrupted in any way. I think it's just a matter of Time Machine being able to access/read them.

Edit2: I'm definitely getting closer - I can get TM to show me all of the dates on the side going back to when I first started using TC. Still no files in TM yet, though but I'm fairly certain it's some sort of permissioning issue with the versioning when Catalina changed the extension from .sparsebundle to .backupbundle and not anything wrong with TM/TC.

I started poking around in MacBook > Hard Drive > Volumes (if you're using finder instead of terminal you'll need to cmd + ctrl + . to see hidden files) and it looks like there were quite a few files:

• .timemachine > Time Capsule._afpovertcp._tcp.local > a directory with a name that looks like some sort of hash and that contained the "data" remote volume on my TC with "date created" of when I started using TC and "date modified" of when I upgraded to Catalina. It looks like this was my last backup before the upgrade. It wouldn't let me open it though, saying I don't have permission. (Again, my TC is password protected and my backup files are encrypted.)
• Time Machine Backups > Backsup.backupdb > MacBook correctly shows all of the retained TM backups but I'm fairly certain this is a locally-stored database of previews of the files that TM uses to help you browse the files.
• com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots > Backups.backupdb > MacBook contains all the directories of backups that I can currently see. Interestingly, when I opened this directory in finder I could only see one snapshot directory - for about 10 minutes earlier. But when I had Backups.backupdb > MacBook open in finder and selected TM > Enter TM all of the other snapshot backups populated within the directory. I'm fairly certain this is also a locally-stored database of previews of the files that TM uses.
• Data (this is external TM disk) > MacBook.backupbundle is showing correct "date created" of 2015 when I first started using TC and correct "date modified" of an hour ago when I backup to TM. Interestingly, the drive itself ("Data") is showing correct "date created" but showing "date modified" of the last backup I did before I upgraded to Catalina.

So, what I know for certain so far:

1. The backups exist on TC and appear to be readable and writable by TM.
2. TM for whatever reason, appears to be ignoring the local db of backup preview files and instead looking only to the local snapshots taken within the last 24h (IIRC this local snapshot thing was a new feature for Catalina so users could revert back to before some sort of install gone wrong).

Edit3: I know what the issue is (still not-quite sure how to resolve it, but baby steps). Catalina creates a dedicated read-only system volume and a separate read & write system volume - you can read more about it here. Still poking around in MacBook > Volumes > Time Machine Backups > Backups.backupdb > MacBook > the directories (saved by date) for each backup it seems the post-Catalina backups save both volumes: "Hard Drive Name" AND "Hard Drive Name - Data". "Hard Drive Name" is basically empty except for com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots and all the good stuff is saved in "Hard Drive Name - Data" which is a problem because... up until Catalina and the two-volume system all of this data was saved in TM backups as simply "Hard Drive Name". I'm tempted to delete the "Hard Drive Name" directory for my most recent backup and rename "Hard Drive Name - Data" to "Hard Drive Name" and see if that forces TM to pull in all of the files on TC but I need to ponder a but whether that's smart or dumb before I pull the trigger.

 

[RiderX]

Same problem here with a NAS server. It seems, network Timemachine is heavily broken. The old backups still exist, and sometimes I could access them. It is just terribly slow and takes forever to update even a folder listing.

 

[macguru9999]

I was wondering if anyone has had luck recovering files from corrupt sparsebundle (actually a backupbundle but the same thing) on an apple time capsule. This person has lost their photos from a faulty fusion drive imac running big sur that has been backing up to a time capsule and the computer has been repaired by apple so the data is gone, and the sparsebundle can be copied to another disk but will not mount as a volume, and its 500gb in size comprising data encoded in "bands" of about 200mb each. Naturally a normal time machine restore also fails with "no volumes" ... but the data is there .... they really had the worst possible setup.