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Time Capsule - Latest Backup Not Available in Migration Assistant

Hello.


I am trying to set up a new Macbook Pro using the Migration Assistant to pull the data from my Time Capsule. When the Migration Assistant pulls up the Time Capsule the latest back up is from 2018 yet when I look at the Time Machine Time Capsule information it shows the latest backup was yesterday, 9/22/20.


I've made sure both computers are on the latest iOS but each time I try to use the Migration Assistant I can't get to the lastest Time Capsule backup.


Any and all suggestions are appreciated.


Thank you in advance.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Sep 23, 2020 3:21 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 23, 2020 3:30 PM

If you still have the old laptop, run migration assistant on both laptop with them network connected.. you can migrate directly from a running machine.


https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204350


Was the old laptop running Catalina? If so your problem might be migration assistant is finding old sparsebundle instead of the catalina backupbundle. Apple made major changes at Catalina which are problematic to say the least.


If you still have issues post back.

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 23, 2020 3:30 PM in response to justin_tyler

If you still have the old laptop, run migration assistant on both laptop with them network connected.. you can migrate directly from a running machine.


https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204350


Was the old laptop running Catalina? If so your problem might be migration assistant is finding old sparsebundle instead of the catalina backupbundle. Apple made major changes at Catalina which are problematic to say the least.


If you still have issues post back.

Sep 23, 2020 5:31 PM in response to justin_tyler

Thanks for feedback!!

It was great you still had a working machine. So many people have Time Machine backups they don't realise are useless.


Please NOTE:

Because you only test a backup at the point of purchase of a new machine or worse failure of old one, people seldom realise their backups which show no apparent problems are in fact utterly useless.

Time Machine was a great invention.. Apple has let it go to the dogs.


I strongly recommend

1 Use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable clone. You need a suitable USB drive. For Catalina that means SSD or fast desktop type drive not portable. You can test the clone occasionally by simply booting from it. There is no easier backup test in the whole world.

I know for laptop use plugging in a drive is a pain.. but even if you do it ad hoc once a month that gives you a simple way to recover a faulty machine or migrate to a new one. One external drive can be partitioned and used for 2 computers if you wish.


2 Use CCC to do daily backups to the TC as you would with Time Machine now. CCC can be configured with multiple tasks. So ad hoc backup to local drive and regular sequence backup to network target like Time Capsule.

It is not as good for recovering the 10th iteration of some file you worked on as Time Machine. However it has one big advantage.. it works. Particularly for recovery as Migration Assistant will work fine from CCC clone.



Time Capsule - Latest Backup Not Available in Migration Assistant

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