Recover & use files from crashed TM harddrive

Question

Hi all,
Here's the case.
I switched from a 24" iMac with 10.6 to a 27" iMac with 10.6
During this switch, my only source of backup was a 500GB WD with TimeMachine.
When i plugged this drive into the new iMac, it said the disk was "unformatted", even though I used it the day before to do the final backup.
So here I stand with everything I own datawise lost. I can see the partition containing folders using AppleXsoft File Recovery.
The question: Can I somehow recover these files in their folders, and rebuild them to a hardrive so that the computer will recognise it as a TM-backup?
Any help appreciated!
Alex

Answer 1

V.K. ("the guru" here) is, of course, correct.
Time Machine does incremental backups of new and changed items since the previous backup, but each backup is, in effect, a full one.
This "magic" is done by linking to the backups of the items that did not change with "hard links." An item that was present on your Mac for two or more backups will have multiple hard links to it's backup copies. This structure is used not only at the file level, but also at the directory level.
Prior to Leopard, even OSX did not support doing this at the directory level; and even the Leopard Finder couldn't copy good backups properly, much less corrupted or partial ones.
A data recovery app may be able to recover some of the backup files; but not the structure of links. At best, you're going to get a whole passel of "loose" files, with no structure whatever.
For more details: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/roadto_mac_os_x_leopard_timemachine.html
and: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14