Accessing back-ups on external hard-drive with Time Machine.

Hi guys,
I hope someone can help me with this problem. I am a novice at this so please be patient and forgive my ignorance.
I backed up the internal hard-drive of my '06 iMac onto an external Iomega 500GB hard-drive using Time Machine.
A couple of weeks later the internal hard-drive of my iMac fried and I got the " grey screen of death ".
Now I have the external hard-drive connected to my '06 MacBook.
There is 300GB of data on the external hard-drive. There is only 50GB of space available on my MacBook.
I would like to access my iPhoto on the external hard-drive but when I click on the iPhoto icon in Time Machine, I get "error code 10657 ".
I am NOT trying to do a full restore of the back-up onto the MacBook because :
1. There is not enough space available on the MacBook and
2. I will do a full restore when I have bought and installed a new bigger hard-drive into the iMac.
So, I guess my question is this : Is it possible for me to access my iPhoto on the external hard-drive using my MacBook without doing a complete transfer and if so, how ?
Thanking you in advance,
Sean.

If this is a network device, you can't back it up with Time Machine. If it's directly attached, and in Mac OS format, delete it from the exclusion list in the Time Machine preference pane.

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how do you back up an external hard drive with time capsule?

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Hi BDAqua,
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Message was edited by: Scottishengineer

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See Here
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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
You may also find this Link of Interest...
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Accessing back-ups on external hard-drive with Time Machine.

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