Time Machine Double Trouble

[Macmonter]

My 2 1/2 year old Mac Pro required a logic board replacement to fix a failure to start problem (Applecare just paid for itself). When I got the Mac Pro home and booted it up, a Time Machine message immediately appeared asking to back up to my external hard drive. Seemed reasonable so I let it happen. A progress bar appeared showing that Time Machine was backing up over 400 GB, and it took 3 hours to complete. When completed, I opened Time Machine to fine that it had over-written all the previous back ups.

Not having over a year's worth of back ups was bad enough, but it was made worse by the logic board's replacement causing problems that could have been easily fixed if I had a previous set up to restore. When using my Mac Pro after the fix I discovered that the drivers for my 2 printers, flat bed scanner and Parallels were gone as well as iPhoto themes which prevented printing from iPhoto. After much time and cussing, I reinstalled all the missing drivers. My Apple repair technician who was sympathetic to my problems but unwilling to agree to send someone to my home to fix the problems did agree to provide a CD with iPhoto themes for me to reinstall.

The lessen learned here is to not have Time Machine do a back up until a repaired computer is fully checked for problems.

 

[Jolly Giant]

My 2 1/2 year old Mac Pro required a logic board replacement .. The lessen learned here is to not have Time Machine do a back up until a repaired computer is fully checked for problems.

... and bookmark this user tip: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/C8.html

 

[2Turbo]

Dang, that sucks. I don't know if I want to trust this TM thing. Probably better to just stick to old manual file backups to external.

 

[Macmonter]

... and bookmark this user tip: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/C8.html

Thanks Jolly Giant! I now know Time Machine overwrote the previous back ups because the new logic board made it appear that it is a different computer. However, all is not lost! One of the respondents to that link reported that the old back ups are not overwritten and are still accessible even though TM displays them as empty and grayed out. To access the old back ups open Finder and select the back up drive. All my old back ups are there in a folder separate from the newer back ups. If only I had known that before reloading the scanner, printer and Parallels drivers. Also, I forgot to mention in my original post that the new logic board also erased the licenses for iWork and Photoshop Elements. I can only wonder what other surprises I'll encounter in the days and weeks to come.

 

[Macmonter]

More Problems!

This is an update to my previous post. 2 days after getting my Mac Pro home with a new logic board to correct a "no start" problem, the "no start" problem started again. This time the Apple repair shop said the problem was caused by a faulty video card and replaced it (Applecare covered repair cost). I dreaded turning the computer on when I got it home fearing the same problems that I had encountered after the logic board replacement (missing drivers, licenses, iPhoto themes and past updates inaccessible by Time Machine). But, everything worked!

However, in my last post I wondered what other surprises I would find it time. The surprise found so far was that the Documents and Download folders in all the old updates (updates prior to the logic board replacement) had an "access denied" icon on the folders. Surprisingly, the Applications folders in those back ups were accessible. The Apple repair shop repaired the "permissions" on my external hard drive while they were fixing my Mac Pro. However, only the the earliest 25% of the old back ups had the permissions restored, but I not complaining since the restored permissions were done at no cost by the shop and were not covered by Applecare since it is considered a software problem. Is there an easy, NO RISK way for a computer ignorant to restore "permissions"?

EDIT: After posting this message I realized how dumb my question is. After all, if it was easy to undo denied access, then why deny access in the first place! Forget I asked the question.