Is there anyway to access deleted Time machine backups

I have a fairly new Imac [Sep 2011] with an SSD and 1TB ,setup b apple.
Because of a simple mistake, I messed up this and in doing this I must have deleted Backup on Time Machine. Only backups I am seeing now are from my Network Macbook Pro
Is there anwa to reverse my mistake, get original configuration back and also the TM backups?

Thanks RM
I may be wrong but I understood there was a difference between deleting a backup on computer and deleting backups on TMachine.
Are not files kept on TM until its full.?
If so then somewhere on TM must be data that can be accessed?

Similar Messages

HT201250 is there any way to retrieve deleted time machine backups?

is there any way to retrieve deleted time machine backups? it has now deleted the oldest, but most important backup. It was made right before before upgrading to mountain lion. Because I had some issues with placing the files back the way I wanted, I had to connect my hard drive to my mac several times. Result, everytime I did so, a backup was made. Like today, when I was transferring everything from that specific backup. But in the meantime Time Machine made a new backup, deleting the old one I was using. Ironically, I lost everything while I was transferring the files back to my mac. Please give me good news.

Once the external hard drive that you use for Time machine deleted its oldest backup and overwrote it, the ability to retrieve those files disappeared. They are gone for good.
Hope this helps

After Mountain Lion update - problems synching contacts and accessing previous Time Machine backup

I have just set up a MacBoook Pro with a new SSD drive to replace the internal hard drive. I made sure I had a current Time Machine then connected the SSD drive externally and installed Mountain Lion. I installed the SSD drive into the computer. Before restoring applications from the Time Machine backup, I enabled the root user, logged on as that and deleted all other accounts as I have previously had issues with creating a new account from a backup and making that the 'home' user.
All went well except that a few seconds after I opened Contacts they all disappeared. They were replaced with two entries - one for Apple and one with the name of the home account.
I tried to retrieve Contacts from the Time Machine backup. I could see all the past dates but they were all red and inaccessible.
I looked at Contacts in my account at iCloud.com - they were the same 2 contacts as my local machine. I went through the installation process again but made sure that there was no connection to the Internet on completion. My contacts were intact. I exported them to a file and turned on the Internet. A few seconds later, my Contacts were gone..!
I imported from the backup I had made but, after a few seconds they were replaced with the two contacts from iCloud. Nothing I tried would allow me to add the contacts and have them synch to iCloud. I finally found a workaround:
1 disconnect from the Internet
2 import Contacts from the export file
3 select all contacts (ctrl-A) and drag them to the 'on my mac' account in Contacts
4 connect the Internet and watch all the contacts disappear from the iCloud account
5 select all contacts from the 'on my mac' account adn drag them to the iCloud account.
6 watch them synch to iCloud
I still don't understand the problem - perhaps someone can enlighten me - but here's the workaround if someone is having the same problem.
And I still can't access the Time Machine backup that I used to setup the MacBook Pro. Looking at the files within the Time Machine the backup. it looks as though it is probably a permissions issue but I don't see why as the account I am using is the same name as the one used to create the backup. Any guidance would be appreciated.
Jeff

I think you went about this the wrong way. ok....
Could you please try this... (1) Open Address Book - keep it as the main window. (2) Enter Time Machine from the icon in the menu bar... do you have that icon? If not, Open System Preferences, Click Time Machine, put a check mark in Show Time Machine in Menu bar. Close System Preferences. Go back to your addressbook. Make it the primary application open. Now go to the icon in the menu bar that represents TimeMachine and click Enter Timemachine. You should see your stuff...
if you dont...
I would also try...
Open system preferenes. go to the icloud tab. sign out. then sign in.
jdxxs wrote:
I have just set up a MacBoook Pro with a new SSD drive to replace the internal hard drive. I made sure I had a current Time Machine then connected the SSD drive externally and installed Mountain Lion. I installed the SSD drive into the computer. Before restoring applications from the Time Machine backup, I enabled the root user, logged on as that and deleted all other accounts as I have previously had issues with creating a new account from a backup and making that the 'home' user.
All went well except that a few seconds after I opened Contacts they all disappeared. They were replaced with two entries - one for Apple and one with the name of the home account.
I tried to retrieve Contacts from the Time Machine backup. I could see all the past dates but they were all red and inaccessible.
I looked at Contacts in my account at iCloud.com - they were the same 2 contacts as my local machine. I went through the installation process again but made sure that there was no connection to the Internet on completion. My contacts were intact. I exported them to a file and turned on the Internet. A few seconds later, my Contacts were gone..!
I imported from the backup I had made but, after a few seconds they were replaced with the two contacts from iCloud. Nothing I tried would allow me to add the contacts and have them synch to iCloud. I finally found a workaround:
1 disconnect from the Internet
2 import Contacts from the export file
3 select all contacts (ctrl-A) and drag them to the 'on my mac' account in Contacts
4 connect the Internet and watch all the contacts disappear from the iCloud account
5 select all contacts from the 'on my mac' account adn drag them to the iCloud account.
6 watch them synch to iCloud
I still don't understand the problem - perhaps someone can enlighten me - but here's the workaround if someone is having the same problem.
And I still can't access the Time Machine backup that I used to setup the MacBook Pro. Looking at the files within the Time Machine the backup. it looks as though it is probably a permissions issue but I don't see why as the account I am using is the same name as the one used to create the backup. Any guidance would be appreciated.
Jeff

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.

Time Machine only shows the current copy of the file I am trying to restore. There is none of the time machine backup histories shown. I am running OSX 10.7.5. I see the backup files on my external Time Machine hard drive. Help

Time Machine only shows the current copy of the file I am trying to restore. There is none of the time machine backup histories shown. I am running OSX 10.7.5. I see the backup files on my external Time Machine hard drive in the Backups.backupdb folder.
Time Machine does show the history of my Macintosh HD, but when I try to navigate to the folder I wish to restore the backup history disappears. I've been searching for answers and I have not found one that works for me.

Time Machine only shows the current copy of the file I am trying to restore. There is none of the time machine backup histories shown. I am running OSX 10.7.5. I see the backup files on my external Time Machine hard drive in the Backups.backupdb folder.
Time Machine does show the history of my Macintosh HD, but when I try to navigate to the folder I wish to restore the backup history disappears. I've been searching for answers and I have not found one that works for me.

How to delete Time Machine backups from Trash

OK, so you deleted Time Machine backups via Finder and now you can't delete them from Trash.
First of all - you should NOT delete Time Machine backups in this way.
BUT all is not lost - to remove the backup folders from your Trash can, all you need to do is hold down the Alt key whilst using the Empty Trash facility.
Hope this helps.

I have same problem keep getting annoying error something like 8003. trying to delete all of my back ups as well as the one back up i placed in the trash

I am unable to access prior Time Machine backups.

I am unable to access prior Time Machine backups. I can see previous backups when I enter TM but they do not respond when I click on them. My TM is backing backups and at one time I was able to access them. I am logged on to my Mac Pro as the admin. I am running 10.9.5 and the TM disk is an internal 2 TB drive with 12 GB free.

The 12 GB free may be the cause.
Also see:
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Put back deleted time machine backup files

I Accidentally deleted my time machine backups folder although I can still see all my files in the trash of the specific external hard drive. But when I choose put back I get a message saying the files can't be moved because they are backup files.
Is there anyway to go around this?
it seems I just need the right permissions to drag the folder back to its original place.
thank you

I'm up for anything! Those are my only backups and on top of that I can't boot my own computer properly (only through an external HD which has bad sectors) because it gets stuck on Yosemite installation reboot. So I'm trying to get my time machine files back so I can go into recovery mode and see if I can put my yosemite system onto the new internal HD.
I thank you for the help. Here is the information you requested:
Volume name is "Time Machine"
total 600
drwxrwxr-x 17 domingosmiguel staff     646 12 Dez 19:07 .
drwxrwxrwt@ 8 root            admin     272 18 Dez 09:48 ..
-r--------   1 domingosmiguel staff      16 6 Mai 2011 .00254bd50940
-rw-rw-r--@ 1 domingosmiguel staff    6148 15 Dez 11:21 .DS_Store
drwx------   5 domingosmiguel staff     170 15 Out 2011 .Spotlight-V100
drwxrwxrwt@ 3 domingosmiguel staff     102 13 Jun 2013 .TemporaryItems
drwx-wx-wx@ 3 domingosmiguel staff     102 12 Dez 18:40 .Trashes
-rw-r--r--   1 root            wheel 162570 25 Ago 2011 .VolumeIcon.icns
-rw-r--r--@ 1 domingosmiguel staff     312 13 Jun 2013 .apdisk
-rw-r--r--   1 domingosmiguel staff       0 6 Mai 2011 .com.apple.timemachine.supported
-rw-r--r--   1 root            staff     785 25 Nov 2013 .disk_label
-rw-r--r--   1 root            staff    3149 25 Nov 2013 .disk_label_2x
drwx------ 27 domingosmiguel staff     918 15 Dez 12:39 .fseventsd
drwxr-xr-x+ 6 root            staff     204 14 Dez 16:43 Backups.backupdb
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 root            wheel 115716 29 Set 2013 tmbootpicker.efi
I thank you again for the help

Deleted time machine backups in Finder, now what?

I know this was foolish, but I didn't do any research before hand. My external drive had 8Gs left and the Time Machine window said it couldn't backup because it was almost full. I thought it also said something about deleting previous Time Machine backups, so I selected the first 10 or so and put them in the trash. Then when I tried to empty the trash, it took forever (still going right now at 317,996 items to delete). Anyway, my question is, now what? I am not concerned about the older backups but do I need to do anything special for a proper backup of the iMac now? Should I start over or will Time Machine fill in the gaps. I have been searching on the forum but I still don't understand how this works. Any help is greatly appreciated!

photobug mjm wrote:
do I need to do anything special for a proper backup of the iMac now? Should I start over or will Time Machine fill in the gaps. I have been searching on the forum but I still don't understand how this works.
Sorry, I neglected to answer this before.
Assuming there's no damage, or it's repairable, then no, you don't need to do anything more, although you should do a new backup as soon as you're sure the existing backups are ok.
What you've lost is only the backups of any files and folders that existed only at the time of the backups you deleted.
So if those "first 10 or so" were your oldest backups, all you've done is what TM would have done anyway, although perhaps a bit faster. If they were your more recent ones, then you've lost the copies of items that were added or changed after the time of the oldest one still there.
It is a strange concept, and a very powerful system, but let me put it this way: TM will never delete it's copy of anything that's still on your system, or was there at the time of any remaining backup.
You manually deleting them works exactly the same way.
This is the "magic" of the "multi-links" that TM uses. Think of them as multiple, extra-fancy aliases. Every backup contains "links" to TM's copy of every item that was on your Mac at the time of that backup. So a file that's not been changed in a long time will have a whole passel of them; a new file will only have one, or a few. What you deleted were these links; the actual backup copies are only deleted from the TM disk when the last link to it is deleted.
So . . . you may have dodged a bullet!

Manually deleting Time Machine Backups Via Finder?

Hi everyone,
I'll just pose the question right away:
Is it safe (and feasible) to navigate through my external HD in which I've set up for Time Machine via the Finder and manually select and delete back ups (ie. drag them to the trash can)? Thanks!
If you really want to know why I ask, please read below:
I recently had my logic board replaced. Then I noticed my system was not backing itself up via Time Machine. After a few Google searches I found out that when you replace your logic board, your MAC address changes I also found out that Time Machine pairs its backups via MAC addresses.
I found a procedure to help pair your new MAC address to your previous Time Machine backups from the old logic board and MAC address, this required finding your old MAC address, something I could not do. However also read that after completing the procedure, Time Machine will do a FULL backup, backing up all it had basically. It would not have fit on my external HD anyways.
So my plan was instead to start Time Machine fresh with this new logic board and MAC address. However, it needed to do a full backup as well, and I don't have space for that. I don't want to wipe my external hard drive and start from there, because I'm afraid that something will crash in the whole process of starting a new set of backups. What can I do is, delete a set of backups from the old logic board. I am aware of how to do this via the Time Machine interface. But because of my new logic board/MAC address, I cannot view those backups in that Time Machine interface. After having a steady set of new backups, then I'll delete ALL of the old backups.
Thanks ahead of time for any help.

jusdel wrote:
But because of my new logic board/MAC address, I cannot view those backups in that Time Machine interface.
Ah, you haven't found the fairly well-hidden +*Browse Other Time Machine Backups+* option.
See #17 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

How do I delete time machine backups if I can't zoom back in time?

Hi,
I'v been backing up my 250GB HD using time machine very successfully over the years. I store additional home movies that aren't on my HD on my time capsule machine in a seperate folder from the backups that are made daily. My 250GB HD is now full and it has been duplicated and placed on a much larger 1TB HD drive back inside my iMac. Because it is a new HD, time machine is wanting to do a new 250GB backup of it (which is ok), BUT there is not enough space on my time machine drive to do a 250GB backup. I need to delete the prior time machine backups to make space. However, because the HD is new, I'm unable to zoom back in time with time machine and delete backups from the time capsule. When I open time capsule in finder I see a .sparsebundle folder which I assume must contain all my old HD time machine backups. To free up time capsule space, can I simply delete the .spersebundle folder? I'm nervous to do that and don't want to mess anything up, so I'm asking for advise. Any advise would be much appreciated. Thx.

brettnbee wrote:
Hi,
I'v been backing up my 250GB HD using time machine very successfully over the years. I store additional home movies that aren't on my HD on my time capsule machine in a seperate folder from the backups that are made daily.
That's a problem, as you now see. When you get this sorted out, see #Q3 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule for an explanation and some workarounds.
because the HD is new, I'm unable to zoom back in time with time machine and delete backups from the time capsule.
You can see and delete individual backups from an old drive, per #E3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. Deleting a lot of them will take a very long time, of course.
When I open time capsule in finder I see a .sparsebundle folder which I assume must contain all my old HD time machine backups. To free up time capsule space, can I simply delete the .spersebundle folder?
Yup, that's an option, too but will also take quite a while. See #Q5 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule for details.
Whatever you do, by all means, connect via Ethernet cable if at all possible. It will still be slow, but be 2-3 times faster than a good wireless connection.

Deleting time machine backup files from old time machine disk

I have an external USB HD that USED to be my Time Machine backup disk. I have replaced it with a newer FW HD and use the old one for archiving files, disk images, etc. The old disk still had 100gigs of backup files on it from time machine. To free up space, I thought I'd drag a few months of backups off the old dick into the trash. This worked. But I can't empty the trash. When I go to put the backup folders BACk on the USB disk, I get an error. So they are stuck in the trash.
Any help? Thanks.

I have always understood that there is no need to delete backup files from Time Machine. Once it reaches 'full' it begins to delete them sequentially of its own accord.
Good policy to check out Pondini's comments.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.htm
Or type Pondini into Google for a broader selection of his offerings.

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.

Accidentally deleted Time Machine backups into Trash...

I messed up big time -- I moved my Time Machine backups into Trash from Finder. I've looked around online and it seems like I've really screwed myself over. I can't reformat/erase the disk because I have about 1.4 TB of other material on it and I don't have any other disk big enough to temporarily hold all these files. Is there any way to either restore or delete the backups without harming the rest of the files on the disk?

Full Details Here from Pondini....
Can't empty the trash after deleting backups via the Finder

Incorrectly Deleted Time Machine Backups

I'm helping a relative who apparently was lead astray recently by a friend. She had a Macbook, with a full disk of Time Machine backups. She bought a new Macbook Pro to replace the Macbook. Her friend manually deleted some of the TM backups from her backup disk to make room for new backups of the new machine.
I believe he did this via the Finder, simply by deleting the oldest dated folders within the Backups.backupdb folder. I gather that this is a no-no because all the files are linked. I understand that you have to do it through the Time Machine "star wars" interface.
If this person deleted old backups via the Finder, does that mean that the remaining backups of the old Macbook are useless? Is there any point in keeping them?
Many thanks to anybody who can shed any light --
Steve

Okay, I understand. But I read this page, explaining Hard Links:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Works.html
Based on what I see there, it ought to be possible to manually delete the dated folders within the backups.backupdb folder -- since the "files" in those folders are just hard links to the actual backup data.
The structure is:
backups.backupdb
         Joe's Macbook
               date 1
               date 2
               date 3
               etc.
It's the oldest of those dated folders that were deleted. That means that all of the other dated folders won't work with TM?
Also, can you explain what you meant when you said that "They can still be used to restore manually." Do you mean, via a simple finder copy?
Many thanks for your help --
Steve

Is there anyway to access deleted Time machine backups

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