Recovering photos using Time Machine

I accidently deleted an album very precious to me... no external back up other than Time Machine. I've done digging through Master Files using Time Machine but not finding my lost photos. I am wondering if perhaps I can go back in time and find them in the iPhoto trash? Is there anyway to do this? Any other tips to finding lost photos?
Thanks!

Unfortunately you need to restore the entire iPhoto library
You can not restore an album as albums simply do not exist except as database entries.
LN

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Retrieval of just photos using Time Machine backup

Had the hard disk replaced on my iMac. I would now like to retrieve just the photos and videos (that were in iPhoto) from the backup (used Time Machine). I don't want to restore the entire thing. How do I go about doing this?

I think you hit it on the last part.
When you reinstall the OS (or use a new system) and create a username, if it is the same as the username that you are trying to restore, there will be a conflict. Items in the users folder (music, documents, pictures... any subfolder) are bound to that UID. You should be able to rename the user account that you set up on the new system, then restore the old user and docs and delete the initial "setup" user account. Once they log in with the restored user account, permissions should be fine.

Recovering photos from time machine

I just bought a new MacBook Pro and find that time machine is not allowing me to retrieve photos from Time Machine through iPhoto like it used to. How do I do that now?

With the current version of iPhoto only entire iPhoto Libraries can be restored:
If you need to restore a single photo and know the file name there is a way to do that. If that's what you want post back and I'll layout how to do it.
OT

Recovering Lion using Time Machine

Hello!
I have upgraded to Lion 1 day after Apple released it. Everything is OK. But I have a problem with finding and accessing the recovery partition
I tried OPTION key on start up, it didn't work, they only partitions I see are Macintosh HD and Windows.
Also, I tried COMMAND+R, it didn't work either. Lion is starting normally and when the log on window appears, "R"s are added to the Password area.
I just want to be sure that I am safe incase something went wrong with my Mac, I need a solution.
Like in Snow Leopard, I use Time Machine on frequent basis.
The question is, can I use the Snow Leopard Disk that came with my MacBook to recover Lion? or I need the Recovery Partition?
Regards,
AMDeeb

No, if you use a Snow Leopard disc, the RP will not be created. That's why you need to re-download Lion.
No I said its OK if the Recovery Partition wont be created, I just need a way to recovery my Mac OS, even if its an external source, not a partition inside my Mac.
Some say you must press and hold Option first. (I can't test that myself, since I got Lion via the beta program.)
This didn't work either.
It does work; perhaps the site was down temporarily?
Yes it seems the site was down temporarily. Although no message appeared, I think the problem is with my Mac having another partition inaddition to Mac and BootCamp, a FAT Partition.
Last time, BootCamp Assistant couldn't let me create a BootCamp Partition because I have a FAT Partition. I ended up removing the FAT, and creating it after BootCamp was installed.
It seems also this time Lion couldn't create a recovery partition because of FAT partition.

Restoring photos, using time machine

Yesterday I lost 1/3 of my photos in iPhoto. When I go back in time machine to an earlier day when they were all there, I can't locate the file. The 'images' in the sidebar is grayed out so I can't use that. I tried holding the option & command keys to get to the rebuild section but they warn to back up photos before using this step which I can't do. Any help would be appreciated. (I have iPhoto '9)
RF
iMac 24 Mac OS X (10.0.x) 2 TB external drives

When you are in TM you have a finder window and you control the date with the arrows or the display on the right - the restore button is in the lower right hand corner of the screen
You go to the date you want and select the iPhoto library (by default in your pictures folder in your account) and click on restore
On the time machine screen I find 3 iPhoto library icons with titles like 'recovery', 'old', etc.
Do you have these in your finder window prior to entering TM?
LN

How do I recover photos from time machine

I am trying to recover photos from a time machine with a different MAC, running 10.5.8 (same as old one)
I can only see the back up of my second Mac not the first.

See #17...... How can I see my backups, or the backups for a different Mac? in Pondini's excellent support document.....Time Machine --- Frequently Asked Questions.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Unable to recover Mavericks via Time Machine on iMac (2011). I have one Time Machine backup from this week On new Time Capsule. I already attempted safe boot and NPRAM reset. Hard drive and permissions verified as ok.

Some more history - I'm not too techie so added everything in I thought might be significant!
- Installed Mavericks on iMac in October 2013
- experienced regular low memory issues - used Memory Clean app as a workaround
- last week decided to upgrade installed memory from 4gb to 16gb. Faster loading but still running out of memory - just takes longer to do so.
- also last week purchased 2gb Time Capsule (to back up 660gb on 1TB drive)
- one successful Time Machine backup completed last weekend.
- I decided to try and clear some space, tidy my folders, old music files, delete duplicates etc (Not system files)
- then tried out 'time machine restore' just to test it out. Deleted files and folders recovered ok using Time Machine menu (the one that looks like outta space)
- yesterday, Avast Anti-Virus flagged virus detected (sorry, I didn't manage to capture details) and quarantined file, but I couldn't get any windows to respond so forced Mac to shutdown.
- attempted regular reboot , system hanging on white/ apple symbol screen.
- attempted Safe reboot - reboot stalls at mess 'BootCacheControl: unable to open /var/db/BootCache.playlist no such file or directory.
(I don't know if this is significant)
- attempt NPRAM reset, reboot hanging at Apple symbol still
- attempted reboot into Disk Utility. HD drive verified ok. Permissions checked and Safari permissions fixed (only)
- finally attempting restore from Time Machine Backup via Disk Utility. Stalls at 'select a backup source'. Menu is 'searching for Time Machine Backup....'
Nothing is listed, after a few mins machine just goes to sleep.
My Time Capsule and networks are all switched on. No idea what to try next!

Most of the problems like this that people report on this forum are due to bad "utilities" like Memory Clean and Avast.
Your Mac probably didn't have a virus. There has never been an OSX virus "in the wild". Third party antivirus software is of very dubious utility on Macs. Macs are not PCs. OSX has anti-malware protection built into it already.
Do you have any other third party "utilities" on your Mac, such as CleanMyMac or MacKeeper?
Is the RAM you installed the recommended type of RAM for your Mac?
Take a look at this page: Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup
But your OS may be damaged beyond repair, or beyond what disk utility is able to repair.
In that case you have a few options:
There is a small chance that a (reputable) third part utility like Techtool Pro 7 may be able to fix your OS.
Try to boot into single user mode (restart, hold down ⌘S until you see a black screen with white text) and repair your hard drive. Here's a reference with directions: Repair Your Hard Disk in Single User Mode | Everything Macintosh
bite the bullet, boot into the recovery partition or internet recovery, and erase your HD, reinstall Mavericks from scratch, and start over. Your documents are probably still on your Time Machine Backup. I wouldn't reinstall the documents via a migration- you don't want to reinstall bad system files along with your documents- but you could copy them one by one back to your internal HD. And most importantly- don't reinstall any third party "utilites" like Memory Clean or Avast (or any other third-party antivirus software, for that matter).

When I used time machine to recover lost photos, iPhoto lost my recent photos.

Yesterday, I noticed that iPhoto was missing all the photos from one event that was actually a number of events that I had merged together fairly recently. I used time machine from an external drive to recover them, but when I restored the photo library from time machine, instead of having that photo library in addition to the one I had before, the archived version replaced the current photos, so that any photos more recent than the event I was trying to recover have gone missing. I tried to use time machine again to recover the photos that I lost while recovering other photos, but now it seems that all of the photo libraries that would be recent enough to have the photos I'm looking for now match the version of the photo library with the most recent events deleted. When I tried to bring the more recent photos back using time machine, I opened the photo library and iPhoto said it detected inconsistensies in my libraries and that it would merge and correct them, but after it did so, the library was still missing my most recent photos. Is there any way to recover these photos? I uploaded them before I connected to the backup drive, but I think they should be stored in the time machine backups that are directly on my computer, I just can't figure out how to get to them.

1. You need to read up on TM and post detailed TM questions in the TM forum
2. When you restore a file (or folder) you either restore to a new location or overwrite the existing file. You make that choice when you restore
3. Not sure what error message you saw but iPhoto does not have any capability to "merge" photos or libraries
4. I am not even clear on what you have. Your post rambles a lot. Are you running TM with default settings. Is it always running and is the TM backup volume always connected?
LN

How do I recover my files after using time machine restore?

Hello guys! I have been using Time Machine to back up my Macintosh HD into an external disk in August this year. Considering the limited storage of my external disk, I have excluded all of my photos and musics to be backed up. Today I got some problems of my system and started using time machine to restore my computer to the state of August. After restoring, I found all of my photos and musics and other important files which have been excluded to be backed up by time machine are missing. What a disaster. Is there any way to recover all the missing files? Or is it possible to undo today's time machine recovery? Many thanks in advance!

many thanks for your reply. But for the current matter, do you have any other great ideas for me to take back all of my missing files. I will definitely buy a lager storage disk to back up all the files. But how could I solve the current issue? I have already tried the software you mentioned in the lien, it seems no help. Thank you anyway!

How do I access photos that were backed up onto an external hard drive using Time Machine?

I used to own a PC. When my computer got too full, I would back up some of my photo albums onto an external hard drive (simply by copying and pasting what I wanted to save on the hard drive) and then delete them on my computer to free up space. Occassionally, I would still plug in my hard drive to access and use those photos when needed. I now own a Macbook Pro and after having issues with my old hard drive, I bought a hard drive compatiable with Macs. I plugged in the hard drive and backed up my entire computer using Time Machine. Now I would like to delete some of my photo albums to free up space on my computer. Before I do that, I would like to double check that they are indeed on the hard drive, but every time I try to open my iPhoto Library from the hard drive I get this error message: "The iPhoto library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Reopen iPhoto with the Option key held down to choose another library." So I tried doing that, but the only option that comes up is my main iPhoto library on my computer. I can't seem to access what is on my hard drive.
I don't plan on deleting ALL of my photo albums, just a few. So I also want to make sure that the next time I plug in my hard drive to back stuff up, it won't copy just what is on my computer and override the last backup, because that would mean losing missing albums I had already deleted. I just want to be able to access photos on my hard drive when I want and occassionally manually add a few more albums to it. I don't intend to keep backing up my entire computer. My main concern are my photos.
Can anyone help?

Try Pondini's articles;
http://pondini.org/TM/15.html - scroll down to the pink box for iPhoto restoation.
Also http://pondini.org/TM/15A.html to clarify how to use the timeline.

How can I use time machine to recover my iWeb09 files?

I read that iWeb stores one's website pages in the domain folder which can be located at ~/Library/Application Support/iWeb. Can I use time machine to recover my iWeb09 files? If so, how? -I tried. I entered my Time Machine back up, and went back in time and brought the domain file forward but it opened only my current site pages, not the ones I am trying to recover. And it says the Domain file was last modified in October 2007 which is crazy because I've been using iWeb a lot and have published many pages. It seems like the uncorrupted pages, which I am trying to recover, existed somewhere on my computer at one point in time and space, less than a week ago, becuse I just published my site to a new hosting service since Apple will soon stop web hosting. So why can I not find them using time machine?

I continued searching and read another person's advise to down load an app named "Find File," then search for .sites. She said spotlight doesn't always find all files. So I did and sure enough, when I searched for .sites I found another Domain package, which I have no idea how it was created but which, it ends up, was the one actually being used by iWeb. So I went to that package then did the time machine and went back to before my web pages became corrupted. I had to delete corrupt blog pages out of my website menu to get iWeb to upload the other page changes even to a local folder.
So I went to that newly found Domain, went back in time, then brought that forward and as you pointed out the domain package had the parts of the pages, the files and jpegs, but not the structure/layout of the pages. So, I guess I gave up on finding the old pages.
Those pages still exist on the Apple hosting server but iWeb doesn't not reverse publication. Cyberduck would bring back the files and bits and peices but again not the pages as a total entity. I'm preparing for the end of Apple website hosting (next month?) and am republishing my old site. I decided to use a new domain name. So my entire original site is still totally intact on the web under the original domain name, on my mobile me site, I guess it will be there till sometime in June?
My problems started when I tried to publish my website to the new server. It just would not publish the whole website in one session. So I decided to do it a few pages at a time. Some pages went up, but as I added more, for some unknown reason the, blog pages, (about 70 subpages), which had aleardy uploaded just fine to the new server, became corrupt and locked up iWeb. Of course once I deleted the corrupt pages I didn't want to continue publishing the site to the host until I found and reinserted uncorrupted pages, knowing publishing changes would delete the already published pages.
At first I thought it was the hosting server's fault, but when I discovered that it wouldn't publish even to a local fold I was able to locate the cause within iWeb, deleted those pages then tested by publishing to a local folder. iWeb worked locally, so I knew I had found the problem pages. Well this is way more than you wanted to know. Thanks for your advise but I'll just start the blogging pages over.

How to store photo's on external drive and still use Time Machine and secondary back up plan

So, My Macbook Pro is now going on 4 years old and I've accumulated around 15,000 photos in iPhoto now. I would like to move everything (or at least everything older than 12 months) onto a portable external drive, but i'm not sure the best way to do this and still keep a good back up plan. My current process is the following -- I have external HD same size as my current internal drive on the MBP, which is formatted that i use Time Machine. I also have a paid subscription to Crash Plan online cloud back up that is connected to my laptop drive (CrashPlan is constant and easy, so I just USB plug in MBP to EHD a few times a month and that's it). If I were to move most of my picture/video's/important docs to an external drive, how would I back that up with Time Machine, and if I did, how would I back up my laptop drive with Time Machine also, and what drive would I assign my Crash Plan online account too? Cant seem to wrap my brain around the easiest and best method. (In short, I want most pics/video's stored off the laptop so that my HD is not consumed; but still easy to access if needed, and easy to back up) Also driving this need for a solution is the fact i would like my next lap top to be an Macbook Air, which I know I can't keep my current set up would not work. Any thoughts are appreciated.

if your internal drive has 250 GB and the external drive with the iPhoto library as well, your TimeMachine should have at least 1 TB.
I have read over some of CrashPlans support docs and it sounds like it will be able to back up and restore the iPhoto library, and as long as you restore the entire library and not single photos, it will save and restore all metadata as well.
I studied their documents to. They are saying they can backup any filetype. And they are saying the iPhoto libraries or Aperture libraries will be backed up automatically, when they are in in the Pictures folder, because the Home folder will be backed up.
On their screenshot you can see, that the libraries are backed up as a nested set of folders, and not as a package. That let's me doubt that the dependencies within the package will be treated correctly. To restore from the backup they recommend to restore the set of nested folders. What I could not find anywhere in the documentation is any information on the filesystem they are storing the backup on. If it is not Apple's MacOS Extended (Journaled, not case sensitive) the restored library may be corrupted, because the internal links in the databases may not work. Try to find out something about the filesystem on the backup servers, before you entrust your iPhoto library to that servers.

The memory on my MAC is full. It holds 4GB of RAM of which 79GB are photos. I would like to back up my photos to an external drive but just don not know how. I do not wish to use time machine. How do I back up my photo library, then delete the them t

The memory on my MAC is full. It holds 4GB of RAM of which 79GB are photos. I would like to back up my photos to an external drive but just do not know how. I do not wish to use time machine. How do I back up my photo library, then delete them from my MAC to free up that 79GB? Thank you.

Hi
Just to clarify a couple of points in your post.
RAM (memory) is different from hard drive space. You have 4GB of RAM, but that has no bearing on the amount of drive space you have, of which we know that 79GB are photos.
If those photos are in iPhoto, you should be able to move the entire iPhoto Library, from the Pictures folder, to your external hard drive. You can just drag and drop. Do not have iPhoto open while you're doing this. Once it's done, you can double-click on the moved iPhoto Library file to associate it with iPhoto, so that the app remembers where the library is for next time.
One more thing. When you move a file to a different location, and then delete the original, you don't have a backup. You still only have one copy. So if that external drive dies, you will lose all your photos. Time Machine is a very good way to prevent this from happening. You should dedicate a different drive for Time Machine backups.
Matt

I have a LaCie external hard disk. I do not know how to retrieve photos from iphoto that have disappeared. I do not know how to use Time Machine

I have a LaCie external hard drive. I also have Time Machine. I somehow have "lost" almost all my 5,000+ photos from iPhoto 8.1.2. I would appreciate someone giving me directions on how to retrieve the photos from the external hard drive or Time Machine.
The last thing that I did that is different from my normal routine was to trash duplicate music tunes from iTunes. I cannot figure out how that would have caused my photos to disappear.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Marilyn

I remember being cautioned to never do anything with the iPhoto Library. Should I have clicked on the iPhoto Library and then Restore?
I do not know "how" items are being placed in the LaCie external drive, just that it shows a backup running about every hour. I have taken a snapshot of the Time Machine Preferences I would you to see. Maybe that would answer this question.
In March 2011 I had to have hard drive on my iMac replaced. I had been using a Seagate external drive for backups. However I was not using Time Machine. When the Apple guru was helping me restore all my files etc on the new hard drive he was not familiar with Seagate and recommended I purchase this LaCie and use Time Machine. I never had any problem retrieving items from the Seagate backup. It was very straightforward. As I mentioned previously, I just don't have a clue with the LaCie and Time Machine.
I hope this is not TMI.
Marilyn

Can I view photos and movies from my external hard drive? I used Time Machine and a WD Passport for backup. Since my drive on my MacBook Pro is filling up I was planning to delete some of the movies and photos.

Can I view photos and movies from my external hard drive? I used Time Machine and a WD Passport for backup. Since my drive on my MacBook Pro is filling up I was planning to delete some of the movies and photos. I wanted to see if I could view them from the hard drive. Thanks

Hello, eco1.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
This sounds like you are wanting to move your iTunes media folder to an external drive and have iTunes this folder from this location. If this is the case then I would recommend taking a look at the article below.
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
Cheers,
Jason H.

Recovering photos using Time Machine

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