My Time Machine can only restore individual files or empty folders

Having upgraded to Snow Leopard, I find that when trying to restore a folder of files from my Time Machine HD one of two things happen: either it copies the folder but not the files within it, or it says I don't have the permissions to copy the folder, and then copies the folder anyway - albeit without its contents. If I restore an individual file, I have no problems - but this is hardly going to provide the security promised by Time Machine if I need to restore a project of files saved in a nest of folders, or worse still restore an entire HD.
I have repaired disk permissions on my Mac, I can't repair permissions on my TM drive (it is greyed out in Disc Utility) and so have erased my TM drive and done a new TM backup of my Mac under Snow Leopard hoping this would solve the problem...
It hasn't! Any suggestions?
I can however connect my G4 Powerbook running Leopard on my WiFi network to the TM drive, and restore folders to it as normal which suggests the issue is to do with the Snow Leopard upgrade...
Jog!

I solved my TM-Problem:
The problem was based on incorrect permission and owner settings in my user folder.
I created a new user and copied the files from the corrupt user folder to the new user folder and corrected the permissions and owner settings.
More information here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963?viewlocale=en_US
Seems that there is a more simple an efficient method:
"Note: In Mac OS X 10.5 and later, while started up ("booted") from the Mac OS X 10.5 installation disc, a user's home directory permissions can be reset using the Reset Password utility."
Message was edited by: brachi

Similar Messages

After clean install of Snow Leopard, Time Machine did not restore all files. When I try to restore these files I get "Not enough disk space" error. What do I need to do to get these important files back onto my Mac from my external hard drive??

After clean install of Snow Leopard, Time Machine did not restore all files. When I try to restore these files I get "Not enough disk space" error. What do I need to do to get these important files back onto my Mac from my external hard drive??

Janet.b wrote:
About 3 years old...pretty dated now I guess. Am thinking I may just need to have it upgraded by a Mac tech.
For what the Apple Store's charge you can buy almost buy a new computer.
Just for giggles I brought my old laptop in for a drive upgrade and asked, they wanted $600 for a drive that only cost $120 at the time and it was a slow 5,400 RPM drive. The new Mac's of a similar make were going for $1000.
I did the drive replacement myself, got a faster drive of better quality for $300 instead.
Then another time I asked for a RAM upgrade from 4GB to 8GB, they wanted to charge $400 + $35 for the labor.
The same RAM is on Crucial.com for $90 and all I need is a 00 micro phillips screwdriver.
So you see what's going on here.
I think what you should do, if your out of warranty/AppleCare, is to call up the local PC tech guy who also does Mac's and have them fix you right up.
They can offer more personalized care which you need. Clone your old drive to the new and everything.
With Apple they are overworked at the Genius Bar and just place roadblocks so you buy a new machine instead.
For instance, all new iMac's now have proprietary drive software installed on the hard drives for heat monitoring. So now the only choice a user has is to bring their iMac into a Apple Store for a very expensive drive upgrade, which a person then decides the money is better spent buying a new machine.

Time Machine can't restore mails prior to ML

Today I found out that I'm not able to restore any emails prior to Mountain Lion via Mail.app and Time Machine. In Finder.app and Contacts.app my backups go back all the way to May 2011 and I don't have any problems restoring files from even the first backup. In Mail however, I can only restore emails that where recieved or composed on Mountain Lion (see green box in screenshot). Although the sidebar of the TM "Star Wars" view in Mail.app shows all my backups, I cannot access anything that was created under Lion (the red box in the screenshot).
Anybody experiencing this too? What could be the cause? Any possible fix?
And of course I already searched http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html but I couldn't find this kind of issue there.
Thanks for your help in advance and Regards,
Werner

Hello all,
I am happy to inform you that in the end I found a workaround:
1) Make sure you enable "show path bar" in the view menu of the finder.
2) Select the applications folder in the finder and then launch Time Machine
3) When you are in the Time Machine galaxy go to the search bar in the Finder and try to search for a random email you sent before your last back-up.
4) The tricky part is that the first time you type in some text it will not perform any search. Delete the text with the backspace and repeat the text. Now it will perform the search.
5) In the results you should now be able to find an email.
6) Now go to the path bar at the bottom of the finder and move along the path until you see the the Mail folder and select it.
7) Press the restore button in Time Machine and your Mail is recovered!
I don't know if the following had any influence, but maybe you should make the hidden home/library folder visible first. I already did this before I took the steps above.
It was a tip I found on the Macworld forum
Dan Frakes wrote:
"Change the hidden flag using Terminal
Launch Terminal from within your own account, type chflags nohidden ~/Library, and press Return. Your Library folder is now permanently visible. To make the folder invisible again, use the command chflags hidden ~/Library."
Good luck!

Time Machine will not restore backup files.

trying to restore a backup to a new internal hard drive and time machine sees the external hard drive with the backup but no folders. tried a couple of different external hard drives and even installed new OS on the new internal drive. the original OS and the new are both Maverick and after three days of swaping drives and installing fresh installs of maverick and talking to tech support, i'm convinced the issue is in Maverick. anyone have a suggest without buying a third party package like Carbon Copy?

I got something simular. I restored the whole TM backup and the mail messages from august '08 till 15 jan '09 didn't import. I can see them clearly sitting in Time machine but the restore button won't lit up. And I cannot go back in time cause it only ofers me the today option. What to do?
Sakshin.

Time Machine/Capsule only restoring past folders not files!

Trying to restore a folder to my mac but only folders and not their contents are restored!
The contents of the files are visible using time machine but it only restores the folders!
I upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard - so the file was backed up using Leopard on a TC.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Matt, I and others have discovered that once an account has been migrated, both Time Machine and Migration Assistant won't let you recover further data from the old backup set (I intend on filing a Bug Report on this by the way).
However, there is a way around this.
First you will need to mount the backup disk image. Click the TC icon in the Sidebar. Double-click the blue share folder, and then double click the white disk image icon.
Once mounted, CTRL-Click the Time Machine icon in the Dock and select "Browse Other Time Machine Disks…".
Select your Time Machine backup drive and the 'star field' interface will launch. This approach will allow you to navigate back to the user folder or item you wish to Restore. You will likely be prompted for the username and password of the old account, but you will be able to move the data.
Once the Restore is complete You should be able to now go into this restored folder and change the permissions of the folder or item you are trying to access.
Highlight the file/folder and select Get Info from the File menu.
Click the tiny gold lock icon at the bottom. You will be asked for your current admin username and password. Now click the tiny "+" button on the left. In the resulting window select your current user account and click "Select".
This should have added your current username to the list under Sharing & Permission. Under "Privilege" change "Read only" to "Read & Write". Now, if the item you are dealing with is a folder, then click the tiny Gear icon at the bottom and select "Apply to enclosed items...".
You will be warned that you can't undo this but click OK anyways. When finished close Get Info and you should now have full access to the item in question.
(Make sure that, if it is iLife data you are moving (iPhoto, iTunes, etc), that you have run Software Update and updated your applications. Otherwise, any attempt to import the old data may result in alerts telling that it was created with a newer version.)
Let us know if this resolves your issue. Cheers!

Time machine doesn't restore all files

Recently I did a complete format and restore in Mavericks. Prior to moving to Mavericks I did a complete backup in Mountain Lion. After restoring from Time Machine many files were missing for Adobe CS4. When I look at the backup disc with Finder I see all the tiles that I need are listed but when I open Time Machine only a third are retrieveable. Without the files that are missing Photoshop CS4 will not run. How can I get the remaining files?

OK, I;m back up and running. Found out that /Library/Applicaiton Support/Adobe was in two places. One was at the root level and another was in my account area. Each had similar files but the root one had the ones I was missing.

Time Machine won't restore a file

I am able to enter Time Machine and navigate (albeit very slowly) to find the file I want to restore.
I am able to select the file and click "restore." It seems to be dragging the file forward on the screen and then it returns me to the desktop, but the file is nowhere to be found.
OSX 10.9.1
Any ideas on how to get a restore to work?

The file should go to its original directory.. have you done a search?
Try restoring manually.. See Q15 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
There are a whole series of specific instructions for specific types of files.
But sometimes the only way to do it is a full restore to a USB drive as alternative location and then pick the file from there..
You can assume what was easy on previous version of OS will be much harder on Mavericks.. The TM changes have not been for the better.

Shift key doesn't select blocks of files. Even after clean install of mavericks in case it was old snow leopard problem. Can only select individual files

Hi for a few months my shift key stopped allowing me to select blocks of files and worked like the cmd key selecting just individual files. Apple store sold me a. New keyboard when I connected it first time it worked. But after shutting down mac it never worked again. Have just performed clean install of new mavericks as I was told it must be the permissions or other account settings etc. But 2 days later after lots of work shift still doesn't work. Every now and then it would work once and then. Not again. I work with photos a lot and only being able to choose individual files is a nightmare. Can anyone explain this problem.?

I installed mavericks from a USB and reformatted the hd. I set up a new user account added email, apple ID etc and then downloaded new iPhoto and iMovie. I manually copied documents, music inc itunes library folder and photos from time machine back up. I also copied original apps only using migration assistant to get idvd and garageband back as despite a lot of searching i couldnt find a way to selectively reinstall original apps not purchased from app store. Only third party apps are photoshop elements 9 and office 2011.

Mountain lion's Time machine can't restore iphoto,

I'd backup overall system via time machine to timecapsule, including iphoto, when I start up time machine to restore some files, as finder ,mail,calendar,they are fine without any problem, But when I launch iphoto then startup time machine, the window of time machine will switch to finder , I can't restore the picture from iPhoto,But I remeber in Snow Leopard, this is fine,Is ML bug?

Welcome to Apple Communities
Open Finder, select Pictures and go to Time Machine. Restore the iPhoto Library

Does a time machine backup also restore system files?

In my case, I've deleted a lot of system files including desktop wallpapers and stuff, because I split my drive into two partitions, and started running very low on space on my primary partition. Now, I want to go back to two partitions, but I am unable to. Hence I have to format my Mac to do so. What my question is is this. If I use Time Machine after formatting to restore a backup, does that also include system files, like wallpapers and etc., or only user files? What about my keychain, browser data like cookies and other user data from my applications? Does all of that come back too? If it does, then I think that the other system files might come back too, right? I specifically remember deleting files from the Application Support folder. Also, every time after finishing a backup, my disk takes hours for encrypting the backup. Is that normal?
PS : I use Mavericks.

Malcolm J. Rayfield wrote:
Well, I did not maintain backups before I deleted the files. What then?
Download and reinstall Mavericks from the App Store. It won't delete any user files.
Correction
It should not delete any user files.
The OP should backup before starting this, in case of error.

Time machine will not restore a file due to lacking permissions

Why is time machine saying that it cannot restore a file due to access persmissions when all I'm trying to do is restore a single file for my one and only user on the same computer that created the backup? Shouldn't that just work?
Does anyone know the reason for it or better yet, a solution to the problem?
Thanks
Daniel Martinsson

Do you have read & write access to that file now?
You should be aware that there's a good chance that some of your backups of that image file are corrupt. It's a large file that's constantly changing when in use, so the copies made during that time may be in an inconsistent state. You'll want to restore from a snapshot that was made when the VM was shut down. Ideally, you should exclude that file from Time Machine backups, and instead back up the contents from within the guest OS. A virtual disk image will fill up your TM backup destination quickly.

Back up of Macbook Pro OSX 10.6.8 with Time Machine can i restore on a new Pro bought with Lion?

I'm Backing up my Pro with time capsule
I wont have access to any mac machine for the next moth where I will buy a new Pro hopefully this will come installed with Lion.
Can i Restore from this back up across the different platforms?

Apple has always provided an easy, automated way to do that, and there's no indication they won't with Lion.
See How do I set up a new Mac from my old Mac or its backups? The link to Using Setup Assistant on Lion won't be posted until Lion is released, but it will likely be similar to the one for Snow Leopard.

After setting up Time Machine can't find other files on TC!

I first used TC as a disk to back up some files, then configured it as Time Machine. Now I can't find the original files anymore. Have the files been wiped out? Does Time Machine set-up partition the disk?
Thanks

Homestone wrote:
Thank you for the detailed instructions on your Time Machine site!
I wonder if it all still applies to OSX 10.6.8, latest Airport Utility and Time Capsule 2TB (purchased 5 days ago) ...
Yes.
You say Time Machine sparsebundle expands over time, possibly overwriting other data on the disk.
No. It won't delete anything else, but it will, eventually, fill all the space available to it.
you give instructions on how to expand the sparsebundle with Disk Utility.
No, the instructions are to limit the maximum size of the sparse bundle.
Is sparsebundle a disk image or a partition?
A rather odd type of disk image.
If keeping other data on TC disk would be risky, why is file sharing an option in Airport Utility, even over WAN, Mobile Me, Bonjour?
Because you can do either. Apple allows you to do both, which is ok in some situations, but usually it becomes a problem, sooner or later.
Perhaps Apple has solved those problems with new hardware/software?
No. You still can't partition the TC's internal HD, short of physically removing it, which voids the warranty. Thus the workarounds.

Time Machine- Can I restore to a different Mac?

Hi,
I had two macs. A Macbook Pro and an iMac. Recently my iMac was destroyed in a flood, and I am not going to replace it.
Both of my mac's backed up to the same Time Capsule and the iMac was my main storage place for my aperture library...
I don't care about anything else on that computer, but I need to get into that aperture library...
Help!
Can I restore it from the back up of my iMac? Is there a way to browse files from my Macbook Pro? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, you can restore to a different location from a different Mac.. look at the info pondini gave here.
Q14-17 http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

If I have an imac backup on Time machine can I restore to a laptop?

I'm having an older macbook pro fixed and it's getting a new HD.... I was wondering if I could use my external HD I normally use with my imac to "restore" all info I have on the imac to the laptop?

You should be able to use Migration Assistant on the MacBook Pro, and then, use the "Restore Time Machine or other disk" option to restore your iMac's Time Machine backup to the MBP.

My Time Machine can only restore individual files or empty folders

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for