Restore files from last Time Machine backup after HD erase and install

I just had to do an "erase and install" ... trying to restore files from my last Time Machine backup but after completing the Airport Utility setup / configure steps, it says "waiting to restart" for a few minutes and then says it cannot find TIme Capsule after restart (though TC never restarted). I'm pretty desperate to get my files back as it's Sunday night and my business needs to be up and running by morning. Any help would be greatly appreciated ... even if it's saying I need to take TC into a Mac store to have them retrieve my files.

While in Time Machine, press the key combination shift-command-C. The front window will show all mounted volumes. All snapshots should now be accessible. Select the one you want and navigate to the files you want to restore.

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Problem restoring files from a Time Machine Backup! HELP!

Heya,
I have Snow Leopard and have been using Time Macine regularly since May.... I never needed to restore any file until now...
Deleted some must have stuff.. and emtird the trash (of course!).. so went to time machine to restore it...
Looked it up... nice interface.. have stuff since May 2011... nice.. found the 10+Gb of stuff I had deleted.. and restored... Pffffew!
Opend the file... Bzzzz! you loose... file is currupt,,, what?
load again.. still no go? files all look the right length m.. hmm very strance... can;t open then... lets try a simeple file...
restore a text file... size ok.. but... EMPTY!
use HexEdit to open the text file... All ZERO's!
check the otehr files I restores ALL ZERO's!
DOH! restore files I saved into safe old Time machine in May 2011... AL ZEROS!!
***! Everything is ZERO! my last 6 months worth of time machine backups is all gone! Directory structures say they are there.. file sizes are ok.. but NO DATA!!!
Can somone please HELP ME!
G./

Open Disk Utility. Click once on the external drive left-most icon (not the indented volume name/icon); what does it indicate for Partition Map Scheme? Also, do you have an Intel Mac or a PPC Mac?
Now click "Verify Disk" and see if it finds errors or if it reports "ok."
What I am hoping (this is something of a long shot) is that there will be errors found on the disk that Disk Utility can repair and then your data will be properly associated with the file names and headers. "Verify" simply reports back on the state of the file system and can do no harm; only when you click on "Repair" will it actually try to repair anything. You might want to report back first on the results of "Verify" before trying to "repair."
By the way, this Verify (or Repair) procedure can take ~ hours for a large disk that is mostly full. I did this recently on an external Time Machine drive that was 1.5 TB in size and 2/3 full and it took ~ 3 hours.
If severe errors are found on that disk, something stronger than Apple's Disk Utility might be called for, such as Disk Warrior. Hence better to report back here before roceeding with any "repairs."
The type of error I am hoping you might have is in the file system that relates the filenames and their header (and file sizes) to the locations around the disk where the actual data inside the file are located. If that file system gets damaged, your computer will have trouble finding the actual data that goes with each file. Hence getting zeros when you should have gotten data. Sometimes this can be fixed, sometimes it cannot. Often it can. If the problem is caused by a physical problem with the disk, the likelihood of recovery is low. If the problem is with the file system/mapping to the data on the drive, it very well might be fixable.
Have you had any power failures, system freezes, improper or disorderly computer shutdowns, etc. or unexpected dismounting of the backup drive anytime since you have been using it? Have you ever gone into that external backup drive in the finder and changed any of the files on it yourself, or has it only been touched indirectly through Time Machine?

How do I recover files from a Time Machine backup after a clean system reinstall?

I had a really funky problem with my Japanese input that is too weird (and irrelevant at this point) to go into here. The gist is that I took my 13-inch, Mid-2012 MacBook Air to the Apple Store in Osaka, and one of their geniuses told me he couldn't isolate the cause and that the only solution was to do a complete reinstall. Of course, I had backed up my whole disk to my Time Capsule before going to the store. The problem is, I cannot do a straight backup, because that will simply bring back the unsolvable problem.
I got the MacBook Air home and used the moving assistant utlity (sorry, I don't know the English name for it since my system's in Japanese) to resinstall all my applications. So far so good. The problem is, I have no idea how to get my files, photos, music, and movies from the Time Capsule into my new account. I didn't see any option for that when I ran the moving assistant utility, and I absolutely do not want to resinstall anything from the old Library Folder.
When I go into Time Machine mode, pinks lines on the right side of the screen indicate that Time Machine has all my old backups there, but when I try to navigate to them, I get only an empty black window. I assume that's because Time Machine does not recognize my old account and new account as the same account (and indeed there is no reason at this point that it should, since I don't know how to link them).
Any help would be very much appreciated.

While in Time Machine, press the key combination shift-command-C. The front window will show all mounted volumes. All snapshots should now be accessible. Select the one you want and navigate to the files you want to restore.

How can I restore files from a time machine back-up of my iMac to an EXTERNAL hard drive connected to MacBook Pro. Using Migrat

I would like to restore files from a time machine back-up of my iMac to an EXTERNAL hard drive connected to MacBook Pro. When I tried using Migration Assistant it only gives me my internal hard drive as an option to restore to. The internal hard drive on my macbook isnt large enough to store the files.

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
OS X can only restore data to the drive where Time Machine backed up files from.
If you want to restore files from the Time Machine backup onto an external drive, your only option is to access to the Time Machine drive manually (open a Finder window and choose your Time Machine drive in the Finder sidebar), navigate through its folders and copy the files you want to the external drive

How to restore an Apple Mail draft file from a time machine backup

How do I restore a single Apple Mail draft file from a time machine backup?

Never mind. Just figured it out. I restored the single file, but after that I'm receiving dozens of old notifications of new Mail. Not sure why.

I accidentally deleted my media files from iTunes and Trash when I was trying to move the files to an external hard drive. Is there a way to restore the media files from a Time Machine backup or from iTunes Match? What are the steps to do this?

I accidentally deleted my media files from iTunes and Trash when I was trying to move the files to an external hard drive. Is there a way to restore the media files from a Time Machine backup or from iTunes Match? What are the steps to do this?

If you have been backing up on Timemachine.
All you need to do is enter time machine... Then the rest is obvious.
Find the iTunes folder and hit 'Restor'.
If not the only way to get all your iTunes music back is to enter iTunes Store.
On the right hand side you should see 'Purchased'.
Click 'purchased' and there you have it.

I need to drag a file from my time machine backup to a usb

I need to drag a file from my time machine backup to a usb

You can restore it to the original location as a copy, if you have a newer version there that you want to keep. So Restoring a file from TM won't over-write a newer file.

Moving files from a Time Machine backup manually vs restoring from a Time Machine backup

I have read several articles saying that contemporary Macs and OSs are built such that they clean themselves up - defragmentation, general sweeping, etc. I was told by the Genius, however, that there are many little files that are left lying around after installs, uninstalls, file making, and file deletion that will gum up the works. He recommended that I set up my computer as though it's brand new and manually transfer files over from my Time Machine backup folder on my ExtHD.
Because I couldn't find a discussion of this specific topic online, I thought I'd bring it to the community myself. Is there an advantage to setting up the computer from scratch and manually moving the files (provided I use Migration Assistant for applications)?
For background: My Mac was running slowly, and after doing some research and talking to a "Genius", I thought it would be wise to reformat my HD and restore my system. Aside from sluggish performance, I was experiencing strange symptoms - like free disk space remaining the same even after deleting huge files, permissions errors, etc. I tried doing a permissions repair (a process I'd been told to do before when experiencing issues, even though I never knew what that really did), and read that I should verify my disk as well. Disk Utility told me that I had to reboot from the repair disk to perform the necessary repairs. The repair disk Disk Utility told me that my disk had some major issues and needed to be reformatted and restored.
HOURS LATER: I am back up and running now and Disk Utility is showing the appropriate amount of free disk space.

Let's start with some basics.
Check under the Apple in the Menu bar About this Mac > More Info
How much Memory do you have installed?
What size is our hard drive and how much free space?
You'll find the term Genius does not necessarily mean they are expert. Even on this forum, you'll find varying difference of opinions and levels of expertise.
I have read several articles saying that contemporary Macs and OSs are built such that they clean themselves up - defragmentation, general sweeping, etc.
This is true. Apps like MacKeeper, CleanMyMac, TuneUpMyMac, Washing Machine or anything like these apps might appear to be helpful, can do too more harm than good. As a result of the 'cleanup' it can leave your Mac non-functional Mac. The forums are full of users with computers that no longer work correctly after running these so call 'cleaners'
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4171
Your Mac runs maintenance in the background for you > Mac OS X: About background maintenance tasks
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2319
I was told by the Genius, however, that there are many little files that are left lying around after installs, uninstalls, file making, and file deletion that will gum up the works.
I'm going to disagree here. Get rid of the installer from downloads after installing. After removing an app, most of the little files do no harm and take up very little space. However some applications mostly crapware/cleaners will leave files that continue to run silently in the background takeing up resources.
Don't install stuff you don't really need. There is no magic bullet to clean up your messes.

How can I restore my old iTunes Time Machine backup after upgrading to Mavericks?

I previously had Snow Leopard, and am wondering how I can simply restore ONLY my iTunes library from my Time Machine backup, last made only a few days ago when I had Snow Leopard. However, I seem to be unable to access anything backed up before I installed Mavericks. Any help would be great, because I'd hate to have to struggle to locate 160GB of music manually.
Many thanks!

Your choice really. Either way will work. Retaining the older backups gives you a way to restore older files. When I upgrade from 10.8 to 10.9, the backups continued without errors. Depending on what you upgraded from, in 10.8/9 you have the option to backup to 2 separate drives thus giving you some protection in case one drive fails. You can either copy the old backup to a new drive (Disk Utility/Restore seems to work best) or start a new one.

Recovering single file from old Time Machine Backup

I see many questions/answers that almost address my issue, but not quite, so I'm starting a new post. If this has been answered somewhere and I missed it feel free to just refer me to the correct post!
I recently had to do a full System Restore from a Time Machine backup. The good news is that it worked beautifully and I'm using my iMac like nothing ever happened. When Time Machine tried to run (post restore), it said I didn't have enough space on my external drive. Okay, based on other posts here I see that it won't just continue from the old TM backups and it's starting "anew"...got it.
The old TM backups must still be on that drive because it shows 144GB USED and 100GB AVAIL of my 250GB external drive. Okay, again based on other posts I know that I could just wipe the drive clean and start fresh...BUT...
I restored to my TM backup of 8/24....now I realize that there are one or two files that I at some point stopped having TM backup and now I want to get them back (the whole point of TM, right?)...I figured since it's "holding" that space on my external drive, the old backups are intact and I just need a way to get to them to pull them back to my restored system, then start TM from scratch.
I can't get at the old TM backups. I've tried:
1) Using the "Browse other Time Machine Backups..." feature. It doesn't see the old TM backup...sees the drive, but nothing on it.
2) Browsing the drive in "Finder"...nothing shows up...just the attempted NEW backup.
3) Connecting the external drive to an entirely different Mac and trying to browse the disk in Finder OR use the Browse other Time Machine Backups...still nothing.
So I have a 250GB drive that shows 144GB used, but no way to even view what that is....am I out of luck? Or would something in DiskUtility or a 3rd party software (DiskWarrior) help in this situation?
Is there any way to go pull one or two files from my old TM backup?

Exactly Glenn....I did nothing to the hard drive after the "restore from Time Machine Backup"...
I've never used the Migration Assistant...have to look into that.
I didn't want to be argumentative since I was the relative newbie asking for help, but I HAVE to believe that if I didn't write over the files (i.e. reformat the drive), AND the Finder is recognizing that there are 144 GB USED, the files must be there, untouched....
The urgency isn't there for me anymore, I've already re-created the one doc I wanted to recover and the other file was my Windows XP virtual machine file...(I didn't want to have to re-install Windows from scratch - but I did)....so maybe this is a good time to "play" with that drive while I can afford to lose everything on it!

Restoring data from a Time machine backup of a potentially corrupted drive

I seem to be the queen of failing hard drives, heh. I'm on my third in a year, and will be addressing the root cause of these failures, of course, but right now, I'm wondering how safe it is to restore from my Time Machine backup. Here's the scenario:
-- Drive started throwing I/O errors, detected via SMARTReporter, about 2-3 months ago. No change in how the machine functioned, all OK.
-- I continued to back up daily to TM & Crashplan
-- While traveling for a month (and not backing up anymore, I left TM home), the machine started acting funny. Finder freezing, etc. I decided to clear some caches (by booting into safe mode) and see what happened.
-- This caused the HD to fail completely. Recovery mode, target disk mode, booting into single user mode and command-lining fixes, and DiskWarrior all failed to rebuild the directory. Failures were in multi-linked files/directories, the catalog file, etc.
-- I ordered a warranty replacment drive (and a new hard drive cable for starters).
When I got home, I borrowed another machine and just did a Verify Disk on the TM backup. It came back totally clean. So, my question is: is it safe to restore the data from my TM backup to the new drive when it arrives?

Shouldn't be any problem.
Boot from your SL installer DVD (hold down the C key on startup or hold down Alt/option on start and choose the installer disc).
OK the language page (if present). From the installer screen, go to the menu bar and choose Disk Utility; depending on the OS version it may be in the Utilities menu or Tools menu.
In DU, select your internal drive in the sidebar (the top item with the makers name and serial no.). Run Repair Disk. If that comes up as disk OK, click the partition tab. Select the partiton from the drop-down above the graphic; 1 partiton is all you need. Go to the options button and ensure that the partition scheme is GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for G5 and earlier) and the file system to Mac OS Extended (Journalled). Name the partiton (usually Macintosh HD), click Apply.
When that's finished, select the new volume in the sidebar (indented to the right below the drive) and go to the Erase tab, select Security options and select zero data (one pass is more than sufficient). Click erase. That will take quite some time; probably measured in hours and dependant on the size of the drive.
When that's completed, close DU and continue with the installation.
Shortly into the installation process, you'll be asked if you want to migrate data from another source. Select 'from a Time Machine Backup' and follow the prompts.
See Pondini's FAQs;
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/19.html
http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/SetupAsst.html
That should leave you with the same setup as you had on the previous MB.

How do I restore Reminders from a Time Machine backup?

Hi,
For reasons which are long and unimportant I have to restore my mac from a time machine backup without being able/wanting to use a full migration assistant etc
I'm currently having issues with restoring my Reminders from the TimeMachine backup I made. I have manged to restore Notes, by going to Library --> Containers and restoring the "com.apple.notes" folder, but this process doesn't work with the similar folder in Containers ("com.apple.reminders").
Am I doing something wrong here? Where does Mountain Lion store the reminders data?
Many thanks for any help

OS X Yosemite version 10.10.1
I recently lost most of the contents of my Reminders. Although I can't be sure of the cause, I suspect a certain Mac cleaning utility.
I was able to restore my Reminders with the help of Apple Support, but the procedure was not straight forward as the ~/Library/Calendars folder “contains account data and generally speaking it will cause iCloud to activate even if deactivated and remove the data since the time stamp on the data is older than on iCloud”.
Here is the procedure that I followed:
1. Disconnect from Internet
2. Make a backup of your current ~/Library/Calendars folder
Locate Calendars folder using Finder
List the folders in your Home folder
Click on Go → Hold down alt key to see Library → Click on Library → Click on Calendars
Copy the Calendars folder to Desktop
3. Locate Calendars folder in Time Machine
Locate Library folder using Finder
List the folders in your Home folder
Click on Go → Hold down alt key to see Library → Click on Library
Enter Time Machine
Locate Library folder for the day/time you want to restore
Click on Calendars folder
4. Restore Calendars folder
Then Restart and check your Reminders to ensure that they are OK
5. Make a local backup of your Reminders
Export each Reminders list to (say) Desktop
Reminders → File → Export
6. Reinstate previously saved Calendars folder
Locate Library folder in Finder
Copy saved Calenders folder from Desktop into Library folder (over-writing previous Calendars folder)
Restart
7. Update Reminders from local backup
Import each Reminders list from Desktop
Reminders → File → Import → select backup file → select appropriate Reminders list
8. Reconnect with Internet

Can I manually recover files from a Time Machine backup?

I'm just about to perform a fresh install of OS X Lion. I plan to re-install the apps I need from scratch so only need my files backed up (iTunes/Aperture library, documents folder etc). At the moment I have time machine backing up to an external USB disk.
Do I need to copy my Music/Pictures/Documents folders to another USB disk before doing a fresh install of Lion or can I just copy/paste them from my time machine backup disk (would save a lot of time)? I don't want to do a time machine recovery, recover preferences or apps etc - just manually recover my data.
Thanks.

JBF80 wrote:
I want to copy all of my files, but not settings or applications. I'm happy to copy/paste the Documents, Pictures and Music directories from the TM disk.
Well, that is what I said ("You can customize what to transfer")

How to restore all Logic files from a Time Machine backup

Hello-
I recently had to clear all of the memory on my laptop, in order to free up some room. It was running very slow, and I had far too much clutter on there. I have a MacBook, and back everything up on Time Capsule, so I've spent the past couple of days individually retrieving all of the files that I want on my computer. I naively thought that I could click on the Logic Pro application from a previous backup, but failed to realize that I have to find the drivers and other components that make up the software. Where can I locate all of these files, and how would you recommend going about restoring all of my projects, drivers, etc.? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Smart mailboxes are not a storage location, they are just a kind of saved search. There's not really anything to restore if you can't restore the messages.
As to your difficulty restoring mail, see the [Time Machine FAQ|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018] and [Time Machine Troubleshooting|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2057525] guides. Also, try posting on the TM forums for better help.

Restoring files from my Time Machine

Hello
I recently had to have a new Hard disk drive installed in my Macbook Pro (Mid 2010). Since i got it i have always had a Time Machine backup running on my network and i have always been able to recover the occasional file when i needed it or do a full restore when that was required.
This time instead of doing a complete restore i thought i would just reinstall mavericks, the apps i use most and then restore just the photos and documents that i wanted to from the backup.
So i installed mavericks and told it where the time machine was and it did a backup of the new installation. Now i cannot see files previous to this. All the time machine screens are blank prior to me reinstalling mavericks.
I am getting very confused as to what i have done or need to do to get back my files
Hope this makes sense and someone can help please
Thank you
Samantha

While in Time Machine, press the key combination shift-command-C. The front window will show all mounted volumes. All snapshots should now be accessible. Select the one you want and navigate to the files you want to restore.

Restore files from last Time Machine backup after HD erase and install

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