I have a Mac mini running 10.14.5 as a server. In System Preferences / Sharing I set up a shared folder on second internal drive HFS+ formatted drive for time machine backups. Backing up and entering the Time Machine backups works fine from three different clients all running 10.14.5. All backups are encrypted. On the server I can mount the sparsebundle and read the backup (so I have the right key).
Now I replaced one client and want to restore a backup. During the setup I can connect with my file server user to the server and see all three clients, but when I select one of the clients, I get the message "some backups cannot be opened". I never get asked for the encryption key.
Following are my settings:
- File Sharing: ON at "smb://server.local"
- Share files using SMB: ON
- Share files using AFP: OFF
- Shared Folder Advance: Share as Time Machine destination on, Share over SMB, only encrypted SMB connections OFF
- Shared Folder Permissions: two user can read and write, admin & everyone can read
Best Answer
Is the new 'replaced' client running on the same level of OS as your other clients?
I ran into the same error message when trying to restore a backup, and only got past it when I first upgraded the OS on the new hard drive to the same level as the prior hard drive was running when the most recent back up was made. That is, I skipped restoring files to the computer until I completed initializing the new drive, then upgraded the OS, and finally went back and restored applications and documents.