Time machine backup/restore: "This user's data doesn't need to be transferred"

So, I had a MacBook Pro 15", Late 2011, that I've been using daily since I got it last October. I set up time machine and every day after work, I would bring my laptop home and plug it into my time machine disk and let it do it's thing. I even used my backups from time to time, when I deleted some bit of code on accident (or on purpose) and decided I wanted to use it after all.

Last week I sold my trusty old MacBook and bought a new MacBook Retina. The guy I was selling it to wanted to keep some of the apps I had installed and he didn't want a full wipe/restore, so I did what I have done before when I sell a Mac: create a new user account and delete the old one, effectively wiping all of my user data.

However, I created the new user and deleted the old one (and ALL of my data) with my time machine hooked up and running.

Now, in restoring my time machine backup to my new laptop, all of my user data is gone. I see my user in the Users list in the Migration Assistant, but under my user name it says "This users's data doesn't need to be transferred."

I tried selecting everything that's available and restoring, but all of my data is gone.

Looking through my backup files, I see the backup for this laptop with all of the different dates. I can expand any of the dates and navigate down into Users, but my user account is gone from every single backup on every date.

Is this an expected behavior? Has anyone ever seen anything like this?

One other thing of note : I had FileVault turned on on the old MacBook, encrypting my home directory. Is there some magic combination of things I need to do in order to restore from an encrypted home directory?

The strange thing is, the restore re-created my user and it remembers my password. But everything, everything about the account has been lost. Keychain, mail settings, all files and libraries, preferences... The only thing it seems to have kept is my login photo, username, and password.

Solution 1:

Just restore from a snapshot that is a bit older than when you did the wiping. If for some reason this isn't easy, you can also delete the folders by time in your backup.

If you have any doubts, you could use a tool like BackupLoupe to make sure you prune only the "bad" backup events and data.

Solution 2:

Time Machine cannot back up a FileVault I user while the user is logged in. Normally it will offer to back up the user when you log out, but if you never log out, or always decline the offer when you do, your user account never gets backed up.

If TM did back up your user, it did it while the user was logged out. In that case, what it backed up was essentially an unmounted sparse bundle disk image. If you log in as a different admin user, you should be able to restore the entire home folder. I don't have a FileVault I user available to test with, but I remember doing this, just as a test, and it worked. I may have had to restore the home folder under a different name, and then use my admin's sudo powers to give it the correct ownership and name before the FV-using user could use it.

The important thing is that when browsing through the backup, do no not attempt to descend into the FV user's home folder. It has to be restored in its entirety or not at all, and cannot be restored in-place.