Continuing using time machine after restore?

[.mark.]

My HD crashed and I lost all the data on it but thankfully I use time machine. I successfully restored my system from it and everything is fine. The only problem is that now when my system tries to backup to TM it complains that there is not enough disk space as there is only 20gb free.

TM is not continuing my incremental backups from before the crash - is there a way I can tell it to continue backing up from where it left off? Or do I need to delete the old backups and start fresh? I would rather be able to use my previous incremental backups and they are all there on the TM drive.

 

[sickmacdoc]

Well the problem is that since you restored your entire hard drive, TM is seeing all files on it as being new/changed (as all files have been freshly written to that disk so it is thinking they are all changed from previous versions) so it is wanting to do a complete new backup, just as it did when you first started up Time Machine.

To see the size of the backup it is wanting to do, open the TM preferences and then tell it to "back up now" from the menubar icon. You will see that is huge.

Unless someone else has another idea, I do not believe you will be able to continue incremental backups to that drive because of that, and you will have no choice but to remove the "Backup.backupsdm" (or similar) folder from the TM drive and start off a fresh backup.

BTW- If the backup drive had been big enough, the incremental backups would have continued- as TM would just consider the new huge backup an incremental not that that is helpful.

 

[Chase R]

Open up Disk Utility and format (erase) your Time Machine drive. Then start doing backups through Time Machine again... Basically like starting fresh.

 

[admwright]

Hmmm, that is a big limitation. So you are unfortunate to have to restore from time machine and then have to dump your backup to start again.

What happens next week when you realise that you actually need that file you deleted before the crash? Oops it went when you had to trash the incremental backup.

Time machine should be smarter than this.

 

[KettyKrueger]

If you're really concerned that you may need the ancient back-ups, why not get another HDD and use that for Time Machine?

Okay, it's not exactly the best idea, but if you need the back up that bad...

 

[turk1077]

Hmmm, that is a big limitation. So you are unfortunate to have to restore from time machine and then have to dump your backup to start again.

What happens next week when you realise that you actually need that file you deleted before the crash? Oops it went when you had to trash the incremental backup.

Time machine should be smarter than this.

100% agree. Was really surprised when I ran into this. Is there really no answer?

 

[newdeal]

...

when I restored after installing an ssd time machine continued backing up to my time capsule as normal. I ended up deleting the sparsebundle anyway because I figured if it was going to write all the data again anyway I may as well start fresh, nothing I would miss on there anyway, but it did continue the incremental backup (of course I also had enough space on my time capsule that it wasn't an issue backing up the full drive again)

 

[RedTomato]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but after having this happen to me, I did some deeper digging.

It's not because the files are 'new' after a restore. The restore also preserves the original file creation and modification dates (well, it has to!).

It's because the new drive has a different UUID (universally unique identifier) so Time Machine sees it as a new drive.

See http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090213071015789 for more details.

It's possible to copy over the UUID, but after seeing the steps needed, I decided not to, and just roll with having a complete new backup done.

 

[Littleodie914]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but after having this happen to me, I did some deeper digging.

It's not because the files are 'new' after a restore. The restore also preserves the original file creation and modification dates (well, it has to!).

It's because the new drive has a different UUID (universally unique identifier) so Time Machine sees it as a new drive.

See http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090213071015789 for more details.

It's possible to copy over the UUID, but after seeing the steps needed, I decided not to, and just roll with having a complete new backup done.

I just encountered this same situation. After a partitioning failure and Time Machine restore, my first backup is the full size of my hard drive.

And while the backup is being stored in the same Backups.backupsdb subdirectory, my new drive does have a different UUID.