Time Machine after MBP repair: Doesn't see old backups?

[BigDaddy5]

I recently had my MBP serviced for a faulty USB port. It's a 15" 2.33ghz MBP, so it's about 2.5 years old or so now. Once I brought my MBP home, and plugged in my external harddrive, it wouldn't recognize my old Time Machine backups. I thought there might be a problem with the backups, but I see them on the harddrive.

So I thought maybe I just needed to tell Time Machine to use that harddrive again. I went into preferences, and selected "change disk," and then picked my external HD again.

It made a new backup, though. Now, when I go into my backups.backupdb folder, I see two folders, one is "XXXXXXX MacBook Pro 15"" and the other is "XXXXXXX MacBook Pro 15" 2"

Why wont Time Machine recognize the original folder, and how can I make it use the original again? Can I combine the two backup folders now, since I've been making backups in #2 since last night?

 

[aristobrat]

Did they replace the logic board of your MBP? I thought Time Machine backups were kept unique by using the MAC address of the ethernet port. If so, your MBP's new logic board probably has a different ethernet port with a different MAC address, thus Time Machine creating a different folder for your backups.

If you ever want to restore from the old Time Machine backups, try holding down the OPTION key when you click the Time Machine option on the menu bar. It should give you the ability to browse to other machines' backups. (Even though in your case, it's really the same overall machine, just with different logic boards making them appear like different machines).

 

[BigDaddy5]

Interesting. It is possible they replaced the logic board, I really don't know. I'd bet they did, since they repaired the USB port...probably just easier to replace the whole board.

Now...is there a way that I can combine the two backups? I just ask because I want to delete the "main" backup for one of them, since the primary backup is 20 gigs, and I basically have two 20 gig backups that I don't really need.

 

[u49aa2]

Interesting. It is possible they replaced the logic board, I really don't know. I'd bet they did, since they repaired the USB port...probably just easier to replace the whole board.

I bet they did, as when my black macbook minidvi failed, they did not even try to fix it, they just replaced the Logicboard. I guess it is either cheaper or more convenient!