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I switched from my old iMac to a newer one, so I wanted to stay with my existing Time Machine backup.

After reading this post I'm still struggling to get the job done on my machine:

sudo tmutil associatedisk -a "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" "/Volumes/WD 2TB/2023-08-21-191544.previous/Macintosh HD - Daten"`

Usage: tmutil associatedisk [-a] mount_point volume_backup_directory
A local volume mount point and a snapshot volume path are required.

Especially I'm confused what to choose for All Data from the discussion above: I would think that this is the root / of the local machine. I found that /Volumes/Macintosh HD is linked to /. But both values do not succeed.

I also tried /System/Volumes/Data which results in the same error message.

Any help or comments?

[Edit] Both machines run Monterey 12.6.8, the format of my backup drive is APFS.

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  • My answer to the other question associated a non-boot disk. My guess (not tested in any way) is that you need -a "/Volumes/Macintosh HD - Daten".
    – Gilby
    Aug 22 at 23:30
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    My advice: Keep the old backup disk carefully (don't make any changes to it) in case of future recovery need, and buy a new disk for the new machine. And that advice is stronger if old and new Macs are not running the same version of macOS or old is Intel and new Apple silicon.
    – Gilby
    Aug 22 at 23:32
  • In the meantime I attached the drive to the new iMac to see what would happen (honestly: I was a bit upset how much trouble the Time Machine backup procedure caused). Also I was able to transfer the contents of the old machine to the new one using the Migration Assistent and connecting both machines with an ethernet cable. So the risk was low to loose data. Anyway, the bright side: after attaching the drive to the new machine a window popped up which offered one option to continue using the existing back up history. Kind of unexpected, but now everything works as expected.
    – Jürgen Jatzkowski
    Aug 25 at 9:53
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    @JürgenJatzkowski Have you tried restoring anything after accepting to use the old backup thereafter? In addition, pls consider putting in your last comment rather as an answer.
    – Alper
    Aug 25 at 22:03

1 Answer 1

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As suggested by @alper I'm posting my comment as an answer:

In the meantime I attached the drive to the new iMac to see what would happen (honestly: I was a bit upset how much trouble the Time Machine backup procedure caused). Also I was able to transfer the contents of the old machine to the new one using the Migration Assistent and connecting both machines with an ethernet cable. So the risk was low to loose data. Anyway, the bright side: after attaching the drive to the new machine a window popped up which offered one option to continue using the existing back up history. Kind of unexpected, but now everything works as expected:

  • full history of backups is available
  • adding new backups is working
  • restoring of some files was successful
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