Backing up your mac to external drive and how to access individual files

I have managed to back up the information on my computer to a external drive as a whole but need to access different files, projects so that i can then delete them from my computer to save space. how do I access the different files on my external drive???

You CAN access the backed up file from a time machine backup. Just attach the external drive you used for time machine backups to your notebook and then Start Time machine (First under preference - slide the switch to "off" so it does not start an automatic backup right then) Once you open the backup files in Time Machine on your Notebook you can navigate back to older backups to get to that file. (Even if you've deleted it on your notebook after having backed up that file)
NOW - I would recommend having another back up, like the other poster, before you delete the file from your notebook. Redundancy is a good thing. The way time machine works is that over time as your external drive begins to fill it will delete the oldest backup(s) and you could potentially loose that file forever.
I have two other back ups - I have a Super Duper (exact) cloned version of my MBP on a second ext. hard drive. Now, this would not work for you since you want to delete that file from your MBP. Since it is an exact copy if you delete that file from your notebook and then go back to do a back up with Super Duper it would delete that file on the cloned version on your ext. hard drive (too keep them exactly the same). There may be other settings to avoid this, but I generally just use it as a clone. I also have a 3rd mobile hard drive where I set up folders for files I want to keep forever and just drag and drop those onto this drive.
You can cut down on having too many ext. drives if they have a big enough capacity by partitioning them in Disk Utility. (i.e one big drive with a partition for Super Duper and another for standard backups)
Hope that helps a bit.
Thanks.
Mark

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Backing up your mac to external drive and how to access individual files

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