Recovering a specific folder after time machine back up

Hey there,
im having lots of problems with my macbook pro retina 15 from last year.
to try to fix problems with the battery not lasting even 3h, the apple care ask me to format my computer.
I tried to do so without success, as i could not download the software due to my horrible conection.
anyway, i had to work the next day so i restored my Time machine i did the same day.
Today i realized that im missing a folder ( hopefully not any others ) and im afraid i may have told my time machine to exclude that folder from my backups long time ago because i had a small hard drive.
My question is, is it possible to restore a specific folder with any tools ?
thanks,.

Whoa.
If you delete the files from your Mac.....you only have one version of them on the WD drive.
What will happen when....not if....the WD drive has a problem?
Only the most foolhardy of users would ever consider keeping only one version of their important files.
My advice, if you decide to do this anyway, would be to only delete files from your Mac that you can afford to lose.
Another thought might be that Time Machine backs up the changes on your Mac. When Time Machine starts needing more space, it will pick up the fact that you deleted the original files from your Mac.....and it will delete them from your backups. You will not know when this will occur.
Bottom line....to be safe, you need at least one version of your important data on two separate drives. When one fails, you at least have the other.

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After Time Machine backs up my file vault files (after logging out), when I next log into the user account it beachballs permanently during log in.

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I was able to get it to work. Thanks for your help. It's unfortunate the two applications do not work well together. This is what I did:
1) Safe boot and logged into the affected user (since the whole issue damaged the account's system settings).
2) Turned off File Vault in System Preferences. I needed to make some space on the hard drive first since apparently the total free space on the hard drive has to equal or exceed the amount of data currently in the file vault. I deleted some files and moved others to the Admin account. This whole process took awhile.
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How do I recover my Bookmarks from a Time Machine Back Up

I just upgraded from a 2 year old MacBook running Snow Leopard to a new MacBook Pro running Lion. Because of the problems Apple has between these 2 operating systems, I can not use the automated Migration Assistant to migrate over any of my old files, user info, or settings to the new machine. I'm having to manually pull over document files and applications from my Time Machine back up disk.
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The following has instructions: OS X Mavericks: Restore items backed up with Time Machine
The following is old but specific to iPhoto and may help: iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later)
Also, see http://www.imore.com/how-set-and-restore-time-machine-backup

After time machine back up

I am using the WD passport for mac, and I need to know if it is safe to delete files from my Macintosh hd once it is on my time machine?

Whoa.
If you delete the files from your Mac.....you only have one version of them on the WD drive.
What will happen when....not if....the WD drive has a problem?
Only the most foolhardy of users would ever consider keeping only one version of their important files.
My advice, if you decide to do this anyway, would be to only delete files from your Mac that you can afford to lose.
Another thought might be that Time Machine backs up the changes on your Mac. When Time Machine starts needing more space, it will pick up the fact that you deleted the original files from your Mac.....and it will delete them from your backups. You will not know when this will occur.
Bottom line....to be safe, you need at least one version of your important data on two separate drives. When one fails, you at least have the other.

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OK, long story, but stay with me.... could be an interesting one here.
So I move to a SSD hard drive in my 24" iMac. New Intel SSD drive is only 160GB, so I'm only using it for the OS, Applications, etc... all of my data is on an external FW800 disk (Western Digital MyBook). I've already relocated my Home Directory to the external drive and that seems to be working great for all my pictures, docs, movies, etc, except for iTunes.
My iTunes library comes up, but I can't locate any of the songs. I checked the preferences and it's pointed to the correct location on the external disk. So, I was trying to do the relocation, but it would appear that the MUSIC folder does not have all the data i copied into it. When I try to open the "iTunes Music" folder I get this error... "The folder "iTunes Music" can't be opened because you don't have permission to see it's content". I've checked my Time Machine drive which obviously has all the music files on it (the space is taken up), but I can't get to them to recover.
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I don't think you understand. I need to get my music from Time machine where it is backed up. How do i find it in time machine and how do i transfer it to a seperate HD?

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Once you have the folder open in the Finder, enter Time Machine and you'll see the snapshots of the folder.

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I had a drive die that had only specific folders backed up. Large files sizes. How do I remove them from time machine now that the drive is gone. I read that you can use the gear menu to remove the back up but it does not seem to work. and since it's not the drive being backed up but only a portion of it, I see no way to remove this data. Any help would be appreciated

You do mean you want to delete all the backups of those folders, right?
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Thanks.

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You might consider partitioning the backup drive and using one of the partitions for TM and the other for permanent storage. Be clear that you should allocate about twice the capacity of your hard drive to the TM partition.

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Can you browse the Time Machine drive from Finder?
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Hi all.
Bit of a wierd one as I can't find a specific solution.
My current setup:
Mac Pro...
First HDD (internal) has OSX 10.8 installed on it (I have a time machine back up of this)
Second HDD (internal) holds my iTunes Media Files (music, movies, apps, books etc)
My New Set up:
Mac Mini
First HDD (internal) I will Time Machine my old OS install onto this.
Second HDD (external) I will copy all of my itunes media here.
So, my question is...
After I have used migration assistant to set up the OS. How do I make sure that my itunes app isn't full of broken links. Can I just select the media folder on the external and tell iTunes that that is my new media location and it will automatically fix broken links?
What is the best way for me to transition from my old set up to my new one.
Apologies if this isn't the correct forum, but it felt the closest to me.
Thanks in advance
Matt

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don't delete anything on the TM drive using finder. you can do it from TM interface. however, in your case it will not help because TM will always make a full backup after a system restore like you did and there is absolutely no way to avoid it. as suggested you might want to reformat the TM drive and start backups from scratch.
BTW, to delete a single backup you start TM, scroll back to that backup, click on the "gears" action button in Finder's toolbar and select "delete backup".

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After installing the most current apps from the App Store, OS X 10.8.5, Safari and iTunes,my system became disfunctional. I did not back up my system before this happened. Before these updates, I had the spinning beach ball on opening and closing apps and applications quiting or freezing. Eventually, after trying to repair by various means, I couldn't access my desktop. I went into Recovery mode and did a backup of my corrupt system and reinstalled OS. I have a good basic system now but now I would like to know, "Can I selectively recover files from my Time Machine Back-up?"

The basic answer is Yes, but it depends on what files. Can you give an example of what type of files and where they were located.

Restore iPhotoLibrary specifically from EXTERNAL Hard drive Time Machine back up?

My laptop Photo Library is corrupted somehow. I tried to restore from a prior in Time Machine on laptop and made the mistake of not saying to keep BOTH copies, but after trying for 3 hours of telling me it was doing it through various windows, a little one popped open saying something about permissions and it opened an old iPhotoLibrary from 2 years ago! ... I do have that one now and am copying it off my laptop as fast as I can to FLICKR
cuz APPLE has become a PHOTO sinkhole... (We are talking 20,000 pics folks with scanned in family pics from 100 yrs ago!)
I think I have a good copy on my External Hard Drive Time Machine back up from about 3 weeks ago. How do I use that to Restore from
or should I just wait for this PHOTOS thing to come out?
NEXT Question is there a convenient way to split it into MULTIPLE ones..eg KEEP old stable photos in one or more.
and use another for all the new ones not editted or sorted yet? I do see there is a new Option under iPHOTO/File menu to just switch
libraries but, of course, you cant even see that if your Library wont open!

For TM help post in the forum for your OS - and see https://www.apple.com/support/timemachine/ and http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html and http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Depends on undisclosed information
With the current OS and iPhoto you switch library using the switch library command - with any version you can switch libraries by holding the option key down while you launch iPhoto which brings up the select library window
And generally it is not a smart idea to have multiple iPhoto libraries - it generally has no advantages and makes things much more difficult and complicated and often leads to user errors that cause major problems
If you want to anyway the most convent way to split libraries is to use the paid version of iPhoto Library Manager - http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ -
LN

HT201250 I had files stored on a hard drive that were not on my Mac. I used the hard drive for my first Time Machine back up, but it was not enough hard drive space to finish. Now those stored files are gone. Is there any way I can recover them?

I had files stored on a hard drive that were not on my Mac. I used the hard drive for my first Time Machine back up, but it was not enough hard drive space to finish. Now those stored files are gone. Is there any way I can recover them? No, they were not part of previous Time Machine backups, and I have checked both the hard drive the documents were lost on and the new one that I now use for backups. Any suggestions would be helpful, as the lost files are old pictures that are gone forever. :[ 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)

Will existing Time Machine back ups build after 1 account migration

I have one i-Mac happily backing up with Time Machine to an external hard drive.
I have just bought a second i-mac (the old one's filling up) and propose to use migration assistant to move an admin account from the old to the new i-mac leaving two other accounts (and their files etc) on the old one. I see from some posts that it seems as if Time Machine will start a new back up series for the new i-mac's back ups (cos its a new MAC address). But what about the old i-mac? Will that continue to extend the existing (old) Time Machine back up files, albeit without my transferred account and its files? I'd like to end up with the old i-mac continuing to work with and build its Time Machine back ups (less my account and its new files) and have a new back up series from the new i-mac building to a separate partition on the external drive.
Second minor point: I have read that putting a partition on the external drive is the best way forward as it will stop competition for space and allow changes in one set up in future to have no impact on the other. Is this the best way forward?
Does this all make sense?
Sorry but I can't see an answer in the forum to what must be a reasonably common issue in this expanding mac world.

I then tried to move it (TM back up files) off with Restore, whilst preserving the TM back ups but I couldn't seem to do it to the i-Macs hard drive nor to partition that to allow this to happen (assuming the lack of a discrete partition was the problem).
That's likely correct. This only works if you restore one entire partition to another, and check the +Erase destination+ box.
The problem was that I could not (maybe for the same contiguous reasons) create a new partition on the old i-Mac just to temporarily move the TM back up to. Without it I could not 'empty' the WDC firewire drive and partition it prior to returning the TM back ups to it albeit contiguously in a dedicated partition.
Unfortunately for me to retain the TM back ups for the account I moved to the new i-Mac, I will have to leave that account on the old i-Mac as well. I can't see a way around that? If I delete the account on it then surely I will lose the ability to Log onto it and then to click TM and see back in time on that account?
If I understand you correctly, that will be true eventually, but not immediately, as TM will, eventually, delete it's copies of anything that's no longer on your internal HD. That will depend, of course, on how long TM can keep it's backups. But while they're still there, if you log on with Admin privileges, you should be able to view the old backups.
Not sure I explained myself clearly. Sorry. Having understood from your earlier help that 'migrate' actually means 'make a copy in another place', I have the migrated account in two places: one now dormant, on the old i-Mac and two, where it is migrated to (the new i-Mac). But TM continues to back up all accounts, indeed everything, on the old i-Mac by dint of its MAC address. So to see the migrated account's past history I assume I have to access the version on the old i-Mac. To put it another way, when logged into one account on the old i-Mac I believe it is not possible to see the TM history and files of another account on that i-Mac despite TM backing the entire HD. You have to be logged in to that account to see it. On the new i-Mac, with its different MAC address, TM is busy creating the first TM back up and I assumed that in the migrate it did not bring TM history as I had read that it is MAC address specific.
The only issue (apart from having this account's history spread over two machines (pre-today on the old i-Mac's TM and today onwards on the new i-Mac) is that I have all the files on both machines. I am not worried about security only unnecessary usage of disk space. It isn't critical, there's lots of it, but it just seems wasteful and untidy. Unless you guys know otherwise?
If I understand what you've done, you do have duplicates of the current contents, but only one copy of the old backups (on the old F/W drive).
On the old i-Mac I have the two accounts I wanted to stay there plus the now dormant account I migrated. TM continues to work away at memorising ALL these although there will be no further changes to the dormant migrated account as I will not be running it on the old i-Mac. On the new i-Mac I have the migrated account of which TM is now creating its first (huge) back up but starting today. There is no history here. So I have copies of everything; its just that the old history of the migrated account remains on the old i-Mac and a new history (does that make sense?) is building from the new one. My point was that if I were to delete the dormant account from the old i-Mac, then I could not access it to use TM with it. I believe TM only shows the history of the account and screen you're in at the time?
There is an option in TM that will allow you to selectively +Delete all backups of+ selected items. +Enter Time Machine,+ locate and select the item(s), click the "gear" icon in the Finder window's toolbar, and select the +Delete all backups of ..+ option.
What you can't do is, keep the backups of only previous versions of things that were changed or deleted. It's all or nothing.
Not sure I understand this. What would have been nice but I do not think is possible is to have moved the account to the new i-Mac together with the TM's back ups of that account and continue to build it up (whilst having access to its history) on the new i-Mac. If that were (is?) possible I could have totally deleted the old account and with it its files from the old i-Mac, freed up some HD space and had a full AND growing TM history all on the new i-Mac.
Many thanks for staying the course and for your continuing help.

Recovering a specific folder after time machine back up

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