How can I recover deleted Time Machine Backups

My internal hard drive was full so I first ran a backup on time machine and reinstalled OSX 10.5.7. I then used time machine to restore my iphoto library, and a few documents. I still had backups going back a couple of months. Unfortunately the next time I backed up it erased all of my old backups and only saved the backup from yesterday. Is there a way to recover old backups from a time machine drive. I turned off time machine and have not written anything to that drive.
How can I recover those old Backups.backupdb.?

Wesley Groves1 wrote:
My internal hard drive was full so I first ran a backup on time machine and reinstalled OSX 10.5.7. I then used time machine to restore my iphoto library, and a few documents. I still had backups going back a couple of months. Unfortunately the next time I backed up it erased all of my old backups and only saved the backup from yesterday. Is there a way to recover old backups from a time machine drive.
no, they were overwritten by the new TM backups.
I turned off time machine and have not written anything to that drive.
How can I recover those old Backups.backupdb.?
you can't.

Similar Messages

How can I copy a time machine backup from one Time Capsule to another ?

How can I copy a time machine backup from one Time Capsule to another ? I bought a 1 Tb Time Capsule to replace my 512Mb Time Capsule. Now, I like to copy my time machine backup from the old Time Capsule to the new one so I can keep using my backup.

from this support article:
(click on image to enlarge)

How Can I Migrate My Time Machine Backups To A New External Hard Drive?

I have a external hard drive that has 500 GBs left, but I want to buy a larger drive.

ivan wrote:
How Can I Migrate My Time Machine Backups To A New External Hard Drive?
I have a external hard drive that has 500 GBs left, but I want to buy a larger drive.
Hi iVain
Fire up *Disk Utility*, click the Restore tab, then drag your old and new TM drives into the Source and Destination fields. Click Restore, and a complete copy of your old TM files will be made on the new drive. Go to TM preferences and select the new drive, and it will continue backing up just as it left off.
Hope this answers your question. See:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2595485&tstart=0

Recover deleted time machine backup

A while ago I deleted my old time machine backup file (named "<name>'s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle"). After it has been deleted i realised my iphone backup with my pictures are still in the time machine backup. Is it possible to recover this time machine backup or even only my iphone backup?
I've used data recovery software but wasn't the backup only a single file? I found a lot of files but none of them seem to be the time machine backup file...

Eendj3 wrote:
A while ago I deleted my old time machine backup file (named "<name>'s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle"). After it has been deleted i realised my iphone backup with my pictures are still in the time machine backup. Is it possible to recover this time machine backup or even only my iphone backup?
I don't know where those are kept -- I suspect it's somewhere in iTunes. If you can find out, then that file/folder will be what you're looking for.
I've used data recovery software but wasn't the backup only a single file?
No. The sparse bundle is a "disk image" that contains it's own format, directory, etc., just like a hard drive. Inside it is a Backups.backupdb folder; inside that is a folder named for your Mac; inside that is a series of date-stamped backup folders. Inside each of those is the full folder/file structure of your Mac.

How can I use the Time Machine Backups from my Old Computer?

I have two months of Time Machine backups made using my old Macintosh computer which died and I no longer have. I have now purchased a new computer and am trying to use the Time Machine back ups from the original computer, but it will not recognise them. How can I get my new MacBook Pro to use the Time Machine Backups from my old Computer? I phoned the Apple help line and they said I cannot use them and would have to delete them. This sounds crazy if you can only use the Time Machine back up file with one computer and have to delete it when you buy a new Mac. Surely there must be some way to transfer ownership (not files) from an old to the new Mac?
Thanks
Richard

Thanks Kevin for the suggestion posted on MacOSXHints how to "Repair Time Machine after logic board changes".
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101
It seems as though I am not alone with my frustration with the way Time Machine uses the MAC address of a computer to tell one system from another. This means that if you have your Mac repaired with a new logic board, or replace your system with a new one, you can't resume backups where you left off. Reading through the readers who used the fix using Terminal, it appears that the fix does not always work. I contacted Apple again, but they were no help. Surely Apple should come out with a solution as more and more people use Time Machine/Time Capsule.
It is CRAZY that after a change computers or a switch in the computer logic board that you cannot resume your Time Machine back ups.

How can i RECOVER a time machine file from the trash

I hope someone can help me... I have spent hours and hours reading forums but none that have addressed my problem.
My daughter gave me her old backup drive. She also has a MAC so she had Time Machine backups on the drive already. I started backing up onto this drive about a year ago. Backups have been done now for a year or so. Last night I got the message that I was running out of space so I looked at the drive and realized that her backups were still on the drive so I moved them into the trash. Then Time Machine wouldn't work anymore and I realized that not only did her backups get moved but all of mine did as well. I need the backups because after I upgraded to Mavericks many of my photos dissappeared from iPhoto. These are photos that I can't recreate - I sell jewelry and take pictures before I send the piece out. Everything is one-of-a-kind so it's very important for me to get these back. I realize now that I never should have moved the backups into the trash as I will have a problem deleting it once I separate her backups from mine but I will deal with that after I figure out this problem.
Is there anything I can do to move the backups back from out of the trash and into Time Machine again? (BTW - I don't know which version of Mavericks I have - I have done all available updates so I assume it is 10.9.3)

As long as you don't delete the trash, the files should be recoverable.
I suspect using the Put Back command could take a long time, so be patient.
If your Time Machine backups are mixed with your daughter's backups you might want to buy a larger drive and move the Time Machine files to the new drive.
Regarding missing photos in iPhoto...There might be options to rebuild/recover that data from iPhoto rather than trying to revert to a Time Machine backup.
Check out this third party app, iPhoto Library Manager. It has a demo.
http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/
Options for a larger drive.
I like the Seagate USB 3.0 Backup plus drives. Works on USB 2.0 ports. They come formatted for PC but easy to format in Disk Utility.
I don't recommend Western Digital because of the boot problem with some of their drives.
LaCie makes good drives.
All Mac formatted drives will cost more and it’s easy to reformat with Disk Utility. Do not use the software that comes with the drives. It’s recommended that you use Apple’s Disk Utility.
Prices vary but this gives you an idea of what you’ll find. As you notice the second and third TB is usually only $15 more per TB. Normally, you’ll find these prices but right now the 1T is more than the 2T
Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 $85
Seagate Backup Plus 2 TB USB 3.0 $99
Seagate Backup Plus 3 TB USB 3.0 $115
I have seen the 3T on sale for $99.
Locally, Best Buy seems to have the best prices.

HT201250 How can I migrate a Time Machine backup from an external hard drive to a new TimeCapsuls?

I just got a 2TB Time Capsule. I want to migrate my time machine backups on an external hard drive to the new Time Capsule. I have about 430Gb of files to back up; I don't want to wait 7-8 days for the backup, unless I have to. I am using OS 10.7.5 (forget which cat that is). I have mounted the TC drive as 10.0.1.1; I tried to drag and drop from old to "data" on TC, but I get the error "The volume is the wrong format for a backup." Any ideas how I can move my old files to the new, and bypass creating a brand new backup file?
Thanks.

Rather than do that, which means starting over from scratch, losing all your edits, organisation and so on, why not simply use iPhoto Library Manager to revert the Library to the older version? Easier, less destructive.
The instructions on that are here
If you really want to start over: you can access the Originals folder simply by going to your Pictures Folder and finding the iPhoto Library there. Right (or Control-) Click on the icon and select 'Show Package Contents'. A finder window will open with the Library exposed.

How can i access the Time Machine backup on my QSAN NAS device?

Hi
I have a QSAN TS412 TurboNas. I have set it up to be used for Time Machine backup and it works fine.
I have anothe device with over a year worth of backups on it and i would like to transfer them to the QSAN device, however the TimeMachine location is not accessible in finder, only the TM app can access it.
I am not the farmiliar with MAC's but am sure there must be a way to get the files where i want them.
Any help is much appreciated.
Ben

Byocky wrote:
Hi
I have been trying to talk to QSAN, but it is very tedious. They are not the most helpful of companies.
I have 10.7.4, it is supported by QSAn, but they just say that it cannot be accessed by finder.
I though a "wiz kid" in the forum may know what to do.
Ben
Gotcha, well good luck...maybe someone has experience with them.

How can I resolve repeated Time Machine backup failures?

Time Machine stopped backing up from my wife's iMac 2 GHz Intel to a designated Iomega FireWire drive on August 6th. I have since erased, reformatted, and reselected the external drive. The profile for the external drive is as follows:
Manufacturer: Iomega
Model: 0x1
GUID: 0xD0B80E5B000BE6
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
HDD USB 2.0/1394A Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x12804
Product Revision Level:
Sub-units:
HDD USB 2.0/1394A SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 149.05 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk2
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
Iomega Time Backup HD:
Capacity: 148.73 GB
Available: 148.31 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk2s2
Mount Point: /Volumes/Iomega Time Backup HD
I have also performed Tech Tool Pro 4.6.2 Advanced Tests on all related hardware to repair any damaged volumes and files but the Time Machine backup stops after at 97.5 MB of approximately 60+ GB of data.
I have been unable to detect a cause for the failure in the Console logs but I note that the following entry has been repeated every few seconds in the system log since about August 23rd:
Aug 26 10:55:30 Dee-Coopers-iMac mds[37]: (Error) Import: importer:0x844400 Importer start failed for 501 (kr:268435459 (ipc/send) invalid destination port)
Aug 26 10:56:00: --- last message repeated 7 times ---

I had experienced the similar problem when I first upgraded to Leopard. The problem was caused by spotlight indexing my hard drive and at the same time Time Machine was trying to backup the spotlight index file. The solution was to temporary exclude most of the documents (I have a lot of pdf files) from spotlight and let it runs through the indexing process before starting Time Machine.
I don't know if my experience help you or not but it might be something worth looking into.
Good luck.

HT201250 How can I determine which Time Machine backups can be deleted to free space on my backup device?

Time Machine keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups.
But are they all incremental or full backups?
How can I determine which can be deleted to free space on my backup device?
Thanks.

Thanks.
So, if TimeMachine only makes one full backup the first time a backup is taken, and then automatically removes backups as space is needed, is there a danger that there can come a point where no single restore point exists?
I find Apple's lack of detail around this topic disappointing. It's such an important thing.
I guess TimeMachine doesn't work quite how I want it too. Seems to be true of so many Apple products!

How can I make my Time Machine backup copy-able again?

Because one of my Time Machine hard drives failed catastrophically, I bought a replaceemnt disk and tried to copy the Backups from my second TM hard drive as a starting point for the new drive.
The copy failed: "A075BE7D-541F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198"cannot be converted. Please install newer version of iWork.
The 2nd error message was The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8062).
The 3rd error message was: The operation can't be completed because you don't have permisssion to access some of the items.
These last two messages were repeated a few times.
Finally, this error message appeared: The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8003).
The copy then terminated.
Some additional points are:
There is only one user on this computer.
My copy of iWork is 4.3, which is the latest on the App store (certainly for Pages).
I am running OS X 10.8.4
I gave up trying to retain the Time Machine history on my new TM drive and used it as a new empty TM backup. So, at this stage I have one old 1TB backup drive with reasonable history and one brand new 3 TB backup. A week later I purchased another 3TB drive. Knowing that I couldn't copy from the old 1TB drive, I tried from the newer 3TB drive. It failed the same way. So the problem is not one of an old corrupted backup; it's new and repeatable.
Using terminal, I searched my TM backup for the file named above (using "sudo ls -aR | grep A075BE7D"). Here's my output:
big-screen:2013-06-11-002736 shenandoah$ sudo ls -aR | grep A075BE7D
Password:
A075BE7D-541F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef
./Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/23/com.apple.documentVersions/A075BE7D-54 1F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef:
./Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/23/com.apple.documentVersions/A075BE7D-54 1F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef/Previews:
./Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/23/com.apple.documentVersions/A075BE7D-54 1F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef/index.pages:
./Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/23/com.apple.documentVersions/A075BE7D-54 1F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef/index.pages/Contents:
./Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/23/com.apple.documentVersions/A075BE7D-54 1F-4AA8-80D6-E5E42DD9B198.pages-tef/index.pages/QuickLook:
big-screen:2013-06-11-002736 shenandoah$
Some web searching leads me to understand that these files are created under some (or all?) circumstances for Pages documents stored in iCloud. The names of the files above tell me this is part of Mountain Lion's version management system.
My question is: how can I safely get rid of the files above or in some other way make my TM backup copyable? I am also concerned that if I can't copy the backup, I may not be able to use it as a backup or as a way to migrate to a new machine.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

David Bean wrote:
So copying from a one-week-old TM volume was failing
Have you run Repair Disk on it?
I now realize that the folder in which the problem file(s) are stored on the backup,.DocumentRevisions-V100, is the folder in which OS X stores its versioning data for all users. I am now trying to work out whether I can safely delete these files from the backup
That does get damaged on occasion. I haven't seen it in quite a while, so it's pretty rare.
You can delete it from the backups, via the TM interface, but you must be able to show invisible items).
First, open the Terminal app (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Be very careful with this app. It's a direct link into UNIX, the underpinnings of OSX, but without the protections of OSX.
In Terminal, the prompt looks like this: <Computer Name>:~ <your name>$
(where <your name> is your short user name). It's followed by a non-blinking block cursor.
Copy, do not type, the following after the prompt:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1
and press Return.
You should just see the prompt again.
Then see Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #12 to delete all the backups of it.
and from the live system filestore so they don't get copied out to a backup again.
Yes. You will, of course, lose all previous versions, but since the file is corrupted, you may have lost some, most, or all of them already.
When done, run the same command to hide the invisible items, but replace the "1" with a zero.

How can I access old Time Machine backups after restoring from Time Machine?

Just restored my iMac and I can only see "Now" when I enter Time Machine. How can I see all the backups and dates I had before I restored?

While in Time Machine, press the key combination shift-command-C. The front window will show all mounted volumes. All snapshots should now be accessible. Select the one you want and navigate to the files you want to restore.

How can recover a Time Machine backup deleted from my time capsule?

I made a Time Machine backup from my Time Capsule. Yesterday I entered to my Time Capsule to deleted some files and I made a mistake and deleted my backup time machine and empty the trash of my computer. Is it posible recover that Time Machine Backup? Thank you very much.

For most users, it is not possible to retrieve a file that has been deleted this way.
In order to do so, you would have needed to power off your Time Capsule immediately after the file was deleted. Then, you must open up the Time Capsule and remove the hard drive, place it in a special enclosure, and use special software to try to retrieve the data.
Even if you do this, there is no guarantee that you will be able to retrieve the file.

How can I delete time machine backup folders moved into the trash from an external drive?

I made the mistake of moving Time Machine backup files into the trash, but I can't seem to delete them. I tried the option key when clicking on "Empty Trash" and "Secure Empty Trash" (before and after rebooting), but that always led to error 8003. The files won't allow me to change their name. Using approchaes to Terminal from three different Mac-related webpages also failed. I also tried Trash It, but it seemed to be making little progress after letting it run 48 hours. Any other suggestions before calling Apple?

Assuming these were not backups made over a network (thus not in a sparse bundle disk image), see #E6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
But any way you empty the trash on that disk/partition is probably going to take a very long time -- there's no doubt several hundred thousand files there, perhaps a million or more.
You may have to just erase the disk (with Disk Utility) and start over.
You really shouldn't have to delete Time Machine backups, as it will do that automatically when the destination gets full. But if you really want to, see #12 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

How can I get my time machine to allow me to recover files again? After upgrading to OS X, the time machine still backs up the files; but, I'm not able to navigate within the time machine or select any folders or files for restore.

How can I get my time machine to allow me to recover files again?
After upgrading MBA to OS X, the time machine still backs up the files; but, I'm not able to navigate within the time machine or select any folders or files for restore.
I've searched and can not find a solution to the problem that's being encountered.

Yeap that all makes sense now.
Do you only have the current backup showing in the TM display?? Won't it fill in the rest?
Over wireless are you waiting for the indexing to finish.. ??
Previous backup may not show for a couple of hours.
Long short of it.. Mavericks version of TM is a pain.
Sometimes it is easier to completely ignore the TM backup and do the restore manually.
I have posted the details here. See if this helps.
Can't access old files on time capsule

How can I recover deleted Time Machine Backups

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