How do I restore time machine alias files cloned from broken hard drive

My external hard drive broke (a tiny transistor broke off after the drive fell two feet to the floor) so I purchased a new one and had the Geek Squad clone what was on my old hard drive onto my new one. I was using Time Machine to backup my files. My external hard drive had a much larger capacity than my macbook pro, so I deleted a number of the files saved on my Macbook Pro, knowing that I could access my files whenever I plugged my ext. hard drive in.
After plugging my new external hard drive into my computer, however, I am finding only alias files and I do not know how to restore my data so I can access all of the files again.
Does anyone know how to restore my time machine data from the cloned data I had transferred from my broken external hard drive to my new external hard drive?
Thanks!

morrisck wrote:
An update - I finally took both of my HDs in to an Apple store and they confirmed my fear: only alias files had been transferred from my old drive, meaning Geek Squad charged me $100 for 850 MB of unusable files.
That has been clear since early in this thread.
Geek Squad has agreed to retry the process
Why pay them to do what you don't need done??? Get a refund and buy an enclosure, which you should have anyway for backups.
but I'm now wishing that I had received more sound advice when I brought the drives into them in the first place.
Don't know who gave you that advice, but I sure wouldn't trust them with my data!
The Apple rep. informed me that my HD works perfectly fine and that it just needs a new enclosure (which I can buy for $20 online, as opposed to paying $100 for a data transfer).
Ummm, the action to take seems very clear to me . . . .

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I have a time machine backup file on a USB hard drive. I bought a time capsule / airport extreme, flat 3TB. I wish to transfer the backup file from the usb hard drive to the time capsule hard drive. 10.6.8

I have a time machine backup file on a USB hard drive. I bought a time capsule / airport extreme, flat 3TB. I wish to transfer the backup file from the usb hard drive to the time capsule hard drive. 10.6.8

Unfortunately, Time Machine backups that are stored on a drive that has been connected directly to a Mac are completely different than Time Machine backups that are stored on a Time Capsule.
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It is possible though, but I would not recommend it due to the complexity and downsides involved with this. To give you an idea of how to do this, check out this support article.
http://pondini.org/TM/18.html
Even if you transfer the "old" backups over to the Time Capsule successfully, Time Machine will not simply "add on" to the old backups.
Time Machine will make a new complete backup of your Mac and then add incremental backups from that point.
My advice.....start a new backup on the Time Capsule and move forward. Keep the USB hard drive around for a month, maybe 2 or 3 in case you need to go back to an old backup for some reason. At that time, you will not likely need the old backups at all since you will have a current 2-3 month history of new backups. At that point, you can erase the USB drive and use it for another purpose.

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Once you have the drive connected to your Mac, click System Preferences (gear icon) on the dock
Click Time Machine
Click Options
Be default, the hard drive will be Excluded from backups. Click the drive to highlight it, then click the "-" (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the drive from Excluded items.
The drive will be backed up on the next Time Machine pass
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How do I restore Time Machine backup files (from TC) to an external HD?

I did a full Time Machine backup of my machine to a Time Capsule. All told, around 500GB. The MBP to which I'd like to transfer the files doesn't have a big enough hard drive. However, I do have a 1TB External HD that I could use. Can I use Time Machine or Migration Assistant to move/access the files? I'm using Lion.

See: Mac 101- Time Machine, Time Machine - 101 Tutorial, Pondini's Time Machine FAQ - All You Need for Time Machine, and Pondini's Time Machine FAQ.

HT201250 Can Time Machine backup files stored on external hard drive

Can Time Machine back up files that are stored on external hard drive and save them on a different external hard drive?
I have my pictures stored on an external hard drive connected to my iMac. I want to make an exact copy of the pictures folder on a separate external hard drive. Can Time Machine do that?
If yes, how?
If no, what's a good way to create a mirror of the folder on External Hard Drive #1 (the original) on External Hard Drive #2 (the backup)?
I am not opposed to manually copying every couple weeks or month, but (1) it's less convenient and (2) I got an error message the first time I tried this saying the files couldn't be copied because some of the files being copied had the same name as each other (not exactly that, I'm at work and don't have the message in front of me right now, but that was the gist of it).
Thanks!

1. Yes, if both drives are formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
2. Reformat the drives if needed, open the Time Machine pane of System Preferences, and remove the drive with the pictures from the list of items set to be excluded.
(110331)

Time machine accessing files on an external hard drive

I backed up my iMac desktop at work onto an external hard drive. I can see the files, but they are all locked. When I go to open, I receive the following message "The folder (whatever the name is) can't be opened because you don't have permission to see its contents." I understand that the system I want to transfer to is different, but is there -- shouldn't there be an override asking for the password.
Since I am the administrator to both systems, I would hope I could see the documents that I created.
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mudmannLA

TM backups are protected by very restrictive Access Control Lists, partly to protect them from being damaged by users changing things, and partly as a security measure.
Sounds like the user you're logged-on to isn't the same one as on the backups.
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Can a Time machine backup be moved from one hard drive to another.

Hello
There are a few questions tucked away in here...
1
My Mac crashed due to a Kernal Panic (screen was flashing) this was happening over 2 weeks so I decided to restore from Time Machine. During a restore the Mac crashed again. So I aborted the restore. When I sparked up the Mac again the Mac's drive had been wiped So I used the OS Snow disc to restore again. When I went to my Iomega back up drive it's power had failed. The upshot is, is that right now i have lost everything. No Backup and no Mac. My external drive is with a data recovery company. I am hoping that they can access the drive and drop the backups onto another external drive (very expensive). Before I commit to this expenditure, if they are successful in accessing the drive, can the TM backups be moved in that way (from one HD to another) and will my Mac recognise these as backups for my machine and thus successfully restore?
2
If all else fails can my Mac be recovered
3
Once that is done i am hoping that the Kernal Panic is resolved, if not I may seek advice also on this. Right now i need my data..
Thanks for any advice
Mark

Pondini Wrote..
the first folder shown (343775 - rycaft DATA) doesn't belong there. I'm guessing it contains some of the "loose" files that the recovery software couldn't figure out where it came from. And/or, it may contain the system files and folders that are normally hidden on a Time Machine drive.
Hi there, the first folder is where the recovery company dropped the recovered hard drive (root) - In an attempt to put the backups at the 'top of the tree' so TM could see the files i pulled the backups file out of there..so what is left?..... I believe it is other files I had on the BU hard drive before it failed. You can see that I have an apvault on there. This is aperture's internal back up. I have not yet tried installing aperture to see if these files can be recovered into aperture. It's an old vault but the best I can get so far. As you can see though, my Itunes folder seems to be a carbon copy of what was on the original HD. I've included a screen shot of this structure also.
Pondini wrote
Did you get the original Time Machine drive back? If so, it's a very long shot, but if it wasn't tried before, see if you can repair it with Disk Utility, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
funily enough I have requested it and since paying the fee to recover this HD they wont respond to emails or calls requesting (My) hard drive back.....
So i tried right clicking the iPhoto Library and Aperture Library and I cannot see Show Package Contents.
ds store wrote:
Just thought I'd mention this software, if it assists in your TM recovery efforts or not, may have special abilites or assets to recover your files.
http://www.tri-edre.fr/english/backintime.html
Now then.... here is a screen shot from your suggestion.........
Looks like we've cracked it..... after i've stopped shaking I will let you know how i get on.....

Time Machine and Powerbook away from external hard drive

According to Apple's Web site:
+"When your mobile Mac is connected to your backup drive, Time Machine works as you’d expect. When it isn’t connected, Time Machine also works as you’d expect. It keeps track of which files have changed since the last backup and backs them up accordingly."+
except this doesn't seem to be happening for me.
Everything is exactly as I'd expect when I'm in the office connected to my external hard drive - hourly backups during the day. However, if I'm away from my desk for a few hours and then come back to the hard drive and plug it in I'd expect (from the description above) to see the hourly backups appear in time machine for when I had my Macbook switched on. If I'm away for a couple of days I'd expect to see one backup per day.
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You are welcome.
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--Bob

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

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Hallo Kieth ,
I am not quite ready to restore the full iphoto library , as I have days of work re - imputting titles,descriptions and enhancement . I hope that your suggestion works , as I use my Macbook basically to work with digital photography. Through time , I will need to delete my library to recover more disc space and I would hate to have to spend more time re - imputting titles and descriptions all over again .
Thanks for your interest and advice.
regards - Alan

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I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

Yes you can make multiple backups on one hard drive, for example if you’ve 1TB hard drive installed in your PC and you’ve two Mac Machines with 500GB drive each then you just make two backup images with size of 500GB each.
http://www.halfspot.com/use-your-pc-hard-drive-for-time-machine-backup/

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Use time machine to save both the iMac hard drive data & an external one

Can i program time machine to save both the iMac hard drive data & an external one

Yes, but it's not advised because it's placing too many backups into one hardware basket, also it will greatly shorted your TimeMachine states where you can go back in time to undelete a file.
It's better to have two backups, each on seperate hardware of each drive.
So if you have a boot drive and a external drive, you should have a clone drive and TimeMachine drive of the boot drive, and a backup drive of the external drive. (or two depending how valuable the data is)
If you drop a drive, or knock it over while it's running, all the data could be lost.
With only TimeMachine as your backup, if you drop or lose it, or if it gets stolen, it takes two backups with it.
A clone and a backp of the external drive stored safely off site is ideal, update it once a week or bi weekly as needed.
A clone is bootable, and is exactly like your boot drive, up in seconds.
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read more here
Most commonly used backup methods

Time Machine not backing up other external hard drive

Hi,
I recently upgraded to Leopard and am trying to use Time Machine. I have one external hard drive that is used specifically for the Time Machine Backup, it's called "Backup Drive". The other hard drive is called "Captured Memories" and is used to store my graphic design files. Time Machine seems to backup my iMac because there is a folder called iMac and it contains the files, but the folder for Captured Memories is blank. I was getting errors saying that the backup failed but when I clicked the "Back Up Now" option on Time Machine, it doesn't list the error - but the Captured Memories folder is still blank so it didn't back up that external drive. I also changed the Spotlight preferences so that it does not search the Backup Drive.
Both the Backup Drive and the Captured Memories drives are the same, they're both Seagate Free Agent Pro drives, 1TB each.
The Free Agent Pro drives both have a sleep timer that I cannot adjust, does that have anything to do with why Time Machine won't backup the Captured Memories drive? If that is the case, what other software can I use to backup the Captured Memories external drive? I want it to sync to the Backup Drive because I am constantly saving and moving files around on the Captured Memories drive.
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Does anyone know how I can simply have the drive backed up like that?
What do I do?
Please help! I really need to make sure that the Captured Memories external drive is being backed up!

I am having a similar problem. I initially set it up 3 days ago and had it back up just the iMac to Time Capsule (about 120 GB) which it did no problem (I initially had my LaCie drive excluded). I then un-excluded my other drive, where all my photos and music reside (about 130 GB). Since then, it keeps trying to back up about 102 GB each time. Looking at the list of backups it does not appear that it has ever successfully backed up the LaCie. I am not aware of any error messages, but I have not been home much. I normally shut down the computer at night but I have been leaving it on trying to let Time Machine do its thing. All I can say is that every time I am at the computer TM is running and it always looks like it is in the middle of backing up 102 GB (usually seems to be near the beginning, never seem to see it more than halfway done). Looking at the TM panel it says the latest backup was 2 days ago. I'd appreciate any advice!

How do I restore time machine alias files cloned from broken hard drive

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