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.

Similar Messages

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.

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.

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

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 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

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.

How do I get back iphone app information from a DELETED Time Machine Backup disk

Hi People,
here is what happened:
I have been using an iPhone App (Audio Memos Free - The Voice Recorder) to record song ideas (I am a songwriter). I have been using it for years.
I backed up my iphone to itunes, and backed up my mac on Time Machine. After a month or so I did a fresh OSX install on my mac, copied all of my files back from Time Machine into my mac, and tried to set up Time Machine. I was not able to do so, so I had to format the Time Machine Backup disk and doing a "fresh" mac Time Machine Backup.
After a week or so, my iphone asks me something like "you do not possess the rights for one or more applications". do not know what i did, but after 1 minute my iPhone was wiped out of all my apps and app contents. I had also the icloud app sync, so i did not worry, recovered from icloud notes, contacts, and all other things. so i did another backup to itunes.
Now i discover icloud did not recover or save the "Audio Memos Free" app content. I know the data are hidden into the Time machine Backup HD, but i do not know where to search for the itunes backup in it.
I know it is in library, but library won't show up.
Any help would be much appreciated.
PS there is a chance that, even without a data recovery, my latest itunes backup was containing these songs, but i do not know how to fish that out of the Time machine drive.
Thank you in advance.

I would email iTunes Customer Service:
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/browser/
CG

I've mistakenly deleted Time Machine backups from my external HDD. How do I fix this?!

I manually deleted several Time Machine backups from my external HDD. Whenever I attempt to empty trash, it states (error code -22) has occurred. How do I fix my predicament?
I understand (now) that I should never do this and ONLY delete from the Time Machine app itself but I did not assume this would be so complex by taking a blind stab at it. How do I either a) place the Time Machine backups where the originated (Put Back is not an option when right-clicked) or b) successfully delete these so I can clear my bin.
I am running Mac OS 10.10 on a 13" MacBook Air (mid-2013) w/ 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD. My external drive is a 5400 RPM WD USB 2.0 External Hard Drive.

Try Trash won't empty deleted time machine backups

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.

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

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

Deleted Time Machine Backups from Finder

I back up my MacBook with Time Machine. My girlfriend has an older MacBook Pro, with Tiger. I was surprised to see that Tiger did not come with any sort of backup utility, and I eventually found Super Duper. I made a backup with Super Duper to my external hard drive with my Time Machine backups. Her computer died, and she took it to Apple. They could not restore her data, which wasn't a big problem because I had made a very recent back up.
I then proceeded to restore the backup. I thought SD kept track of what files belonged to what computer, like TM does. It started copying my TM backups to her hard drive. This wouldn't be a problem, except she only has a 160 GB hard drive, and her backup is about 100 GB and my TM backup was another 100 GB. Thus the file restore would fail. I decided to delete the TM folder, because I was not worried about my computer, and I could create another backup after partition to avoid this disaster again.
I deleted the TM backups... and my drive still had 200 GB of used space. Then I used Google to find out how I royally messed this up. That being said and done, I have had Disk Utility repairing my external hard drive since Thursday at 5p, and it's now 8:40a on Saturday. Furthermore, while I deleted the files, SD still enumerates them and somehow copies them which fills the hard drive before the restore is complete. When I plugged my external hard drive into my MacBook, it automatically started a new TM back up. However, it renamed the folder "Andrew Fawcett's something (2)", as if it were a duplicate folder. So OS 10.5.8 knows somehow that there are files, and so does SD, but I cannot see them.
Apple's support told me to delete the TM backups in Finder... and to fix the invibile files to reformat the drive. How do I fix my TM backups so I can get SD to work? I have files I need to restore! From what I've read, there are a few of you familiar with SD.

afawcett wrote:
I back up my MacBook with Time Machine. My girlfriend has an older MacBook Pro, with Tiger. I was surprised to see that Tiger did not come with any sort of backup utility, and I eventually found Super Duper. I made a backup with Super Duper to my external hard drive with my Time Machine backups. [snip]
I then proceeded to restore the backup. I thought SD kept track of what files belonged to what computer, like TM does. It started copying my TM backups to her hard drive. This wouldn't be a problem, except she only has a 160 GB hard drive, and her backup is about 100 GB and my TM backup was another 100 GB. Thus the file restore would fail. I decided to delete the TM folder, because I was not worried about my computer, and I could create another backup after partition to avoid this disaster again.
I deleted the TM backups... and my drive still had 200 GB of used space. Then I used Google to find out how I royally messed this up. That being said and done, I have had Disk Utility repairing my external hard drive since Thursday at 5p, and it's now 8:40a on Saturday. Furthermore, while I deleted the files, SD still enumerates them and somehow copies them which fills the hard drive before the restore is complete. When I plugged my external hard drive into my MacBook, it automatically started a new TM back up. However, it renamed the folder "Andrew Fawcett's something (2)", as if it were a duplicate folder. So OS 10.5.8 knows somehow that there are files, and so does SD, but I cannot see them.
Apple's support told me to delete the TM backups in Finder... and to fix the invibile files to reformat the drive. How do I fix my TM backups so I can get SD to work? I have files I need to restore! From what I've read, there are a few of you familiar with SD.
SuperDuper! copies entire volumes. That's why it tried to transfer those Time Machine files. If you register SuperDuper! (USD28), you can tell it to exclude certain files, such as those TM files.
If you want to use an external drive for both TM and other storage, you might be happier if you partitioned that drive, using one partition for TM and the other for any other files.
Until you have this resolved, I'd turn off TM on both computers.

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!

Recover deleted time machine backup

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