Yup, didn't realize that keeping the same name on my reinstalled system wasn't enough, my bad. Thanks.

Trying to simplify my backup, I recently followed this hint from Mac OS X Hints on on how to make a bootable Time Machine drive. The idea is to use Disk Utility to restore the OS X install disk to TM drive(in addition to QRecall, I also use TM along with TimeMachineScheduler set at six hour intervals.) After doing this, since it wasn't a real boot image, I could neither run QRecall from the backup drive nor restore from the archive I had moved. I can verify, reindex, and repair, just not restore. So I lost both backups when faced with reinstalling my main system, which is why I wanted to make backing up easier.

Mac OS X Hints recently published a hint on to repair a TM drive when connected to a different logic board, and it involved updating the TM drive's MAC address. Might something similar be going on here? I'd really like to access the archive, as there are a lot of Firefox bookmarks and 1Password passwords in there.