Recovering files from a drive that is now dead

Ok, if I missed this somewhere, sorry. How in the heck do you restore a file using Time Machine from a drive that has gone belly up? I had an external FW drive die on me yesterday. I thought, Mmm, good test here for TM. Well, much to my dismay, when I open TM it does not show the drive that I need to restore from. In other words, the drive that is now dead, who's data I need to restore somewhere else, no longer shows up in the time machine restore area!
I tested this by disconnecting another external drive, and attempting a resotore. Nope, doesn't show up either. Plug it back in, it shows up. Am I missing something here, or is this just a REALLY stupid design?
In the end, I have managed to restore the files by finding them on the TM drive and copying them somewhere else, but this is ridiculous. Isn't the whole idea of a backup system to be able to actually use it to restore files in case of disaster? I mean, if having a HDD die is not a disaster, I'm not sure what is.

OK... if that's what you want, it's trivial.
You can do it via AppleScript and the Finder:
tell application "Finder"
set oldFiles to every file of entire contents of disk "Volume Name" whose creation date is less than ((current date) - 30 * days)
delete oldFiles
end tell
but the Finder is notoriously slow in dealing with large numbers of files and folders. If the disk is large (or, more correctly, if there is a large number of items on the disk) you may be better off with a shell command instead:
do shell script "find /Volumes/VolumeName -Btime +30 -delete"

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Peter,
Thanks for suggesting Disk Utility. I didn't know it existed, but found it and ran it. I checked 'Verify Disk' and it "Found 335234 orphaned clusters, 25174 files, 6428792 KiB free (803599 clusters)" And, then responded (in Red) "Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk."
After I checked "Repair Disk" it responded: "Volume repair complete. Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required."
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    http://www.iskysoft.com/disk-recovery/usb-flash-drive-recovery-mac.html
    http://www.easeus.com/mac/mac-data-recovery-resource/recover-mac-usb-drive.htm
Have you had any experience using any of them? There are many more out there including ones that will 'scan' your flash drive ('free') and tell you what files it can recover, then you have to purchase the full program (~$99) to actually recover them. Two of these programs are listed below:
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    http://www3.softcity.com/mac-data-recovery/?tracking=SC_EN_PP_GO_SE_MDR&keyword= recover%20lost%20files%20on%20mac&gclid=CN7ArqaPn8ICFe_m7AodtFUAHg
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I can re-build the files (~150-200 photo pages from vacation trip back in May), but there were many comments and some special research (maps, etc.) I had included that I would probably not be able to duplicate exactly. Luckily the '.jpg' photos from our trip are still present on the flash drive and also on the camera's memory stick - THANK GOODNESS! However, now I am hoping that one of the recovery programs listed above might solve my problem.
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How to recover data from failed drive that's part of mirrored raid

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hope to get help from someone knowledgeable out there. I have a macpro and recently experienced a failed drive. I set up that failed drive as part of a mirrored raid, this set is not my primary drive and so my computer is stilling up and running but now am wondering how I access the data from the mirrored drive. Should the mirrored drive automatically mount on my desktop whereby I would be able to access the files? This is my first drive failure and I was under the impression having a mirror would duplicate my data and allow me to access it in situations like this. I'm a bit of novice in this area and not sure if the data is truly on the "mirror" or if there are things I need to do.
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Even with a mirror, you still need a backup.
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Hi
Can anyone help me please. About one week ago I started experiencing a clicking sound coming from my Satellite L40 laptop. My laptop froze and when I restarted it, I was directed to the system setup with a message at the bottom saying
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Hi
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Recovering files from a drive that is now dead

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