Restoring to an older backup via time machine?

I restored my iPhone yesterday to clear some things up. When I did it, there were still some problems, so I restored as a new phone and Sync'ed it to iTunes. When I did that all my contacts were different than before.
I want to restore an older backup, to a time when my Phone was how I wanted it. I read here that iTunes keeps only 1 backup. I use time machine. I'm wondering if my Time Machine has a copy of an older back up. If so, where would I find it, and how would I go about doing it? Thanks!

those of us who use time machine might do well to double-check our backups.
i started having trouble with my iPhone and decided to restore. unfortunately, it seems that the last backup i made managed to preserve the problems i was having with my phone, so i decided to restore my next latest backup from time machine. i navigated to ~/Library/Application Support/ but much to my dismay there was no sign of the MobileSync folder! i went through all of my older backups and there was still no sign of it. i checked my time machine options and this directory had NOT been added to the "do not back up" pane. makes me wonder what else time machine might be skipping unbeknownst to me.
just a friendly FYI...

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Can't browse some older backups via Time Machine interface

Problem started after updating to Yosemite. I am running 10.10.1. I can find all my backups, going back to 2010 in fact, when browsing my external FW800 hard drive directly in the Finder. But if I click the menubar icon and choose "Enter Time Machine," I can see some recent backups for some folders, but I cannot access some older backups that I know are there on that same drive. The window title bars in the TM interface are totally grayed out for those older backups. But again, there are all on the same FW800 external HD, and I can search them just fine and extract the files just fine using the Finder.
Is the Time Machine interface totally broken in Yosemite?
Clearly there is nothing wrong with my external FW800 HD, otherwise I wouldn't be able to manually browse and extract files via the Finder. And yes, it makes regular TM backups every day too. It's only the "Enter Time Machine" UI that is partly broken. I say "partly" because some backups (very recent) display, but I cannot access all the backups. It's very strange.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thank you.

We need some clarification on what your requirements might be, since you state that you want to be able to open Time Machine and see backups that were made since you installed Yosemite.....AND....older backups on the drive that were made before you installed Yosemite.
When Yosemite is installed it is supposed to add all of the data included in the Yosemite operating system and combine that with your history of backups with other operating systems. For a number of reasons.....Yosemite does not always do this.....so what happens is that Yosemite starts a whole new "master" backup of your Mac at the time and then begins to add incremental backups since Yosemite has been installed.
When that happens, and you click Enter Time Machine from the menu bar at the top of the screen, you will only see the backups that have been made since Yosemite was installed. Other backups are grayed out on the Time Machine interface display and cannot be accessed......even though the backup data is present on the hard drive, and you can see the data or folders displayed using the Finder.
If you want Time Machine to display current backups.....AND....older backups when you click Enter Time Machine, your only option would be to try to reinstall Yosemite to see if the new installation will display current backups and older backups on the same Time Machine interface.
There is absolutely no assurance that this will be successful if you try it. Your call on that.
What might work......IF.....you can lower your requirements to have both new and old backups displayed on the same Time Machine interface.....and instead have current Yosemite backups displayed on one Time Machine interface and the older backups on another, or separate Time Machine interface.......is to try the Browse Other Time Machine Disks option.
You do not mention at all whether or not you have tried the Browse Other Time Machine Disks in this post or in your video. I assume that you tried this, since it is mentioned in Pondini's documentation and also other Apple Time Machine documentation, and it also did not work for some reason.
But, if you have not done this......and you can lower your display requirements......you might want to try.
1) From your normal Mac desktop, make sure that the "dock" , normally at the bottom of the screen, is displayed......and that the Time Machine icon is displayed there as well.
2) Control-Click.....or.....Right-Click the Time Machine icon to see if an option to Browse Other Time Machine Disks is displayed
3) Click on Browse Other Time Machine Disks
4) If an option to use another disk is displayed, click on the disk to highlight it, then click Use This Disk
What happens when you do this?

My 5 year old iMac's hard drive is at the point of failing. I'm trying to save al files on it, but it wont allow backup via Time Machine to an external hard drive. How can I keep from losing all the files and programs if the hard drive fails?

I'm concerned that my iMac, purchased 5 years ago, is about the crash and I can't back up my files and programs to an external hard drive via Time Machine because the computer freezes after only a couple hundred MB and gets nowhere near the required amount.
How can I save these files and programs if the computer hard drive fails or has to be replaced without the backup being able to be done? I need to do something quickly, but I'm not sure what I can or should be doing.

Get an external hard drive, some good ones that I like are the OWC, http://www.macsales.com Mercury Elite Pro drives...they are very good and reasonably priced.
Get the drive, connect via USB or FireWire, then use Disk Utility to format the new drive as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), and then use Disk Utility to Restore the current drive to the new drive. Restore actually clones the drive so you will have a bootable backup on the external drive.
After you have formatted and named the external drive, click Restore in the main Disk Utility window, drag the name of the old hard drive to the Source box, and drag the name of the new external drive to the Destination box. DU will make an exact clone of the internal drive on the external drive.
That clone will be a complete backup of the operating system and all of your data.
You can test it by restarting the iMac and hold the Option key. That will give you a grey screen showing all bootable drives. Just click the external drive, then click the upward pointing arrow under it and the iMac will boot from that drive.

What is the easiest way to restore to a previous backup of Time Machine?

I was adding some simple album cover artwork to my iTunes collection when the computer locked up. I got the spinning beach ball and was unable to "force quit." So, I did a re-boot using the power key. I then launched iTunes and it opened properly with all the new Album Artwork. The files were not large in size and the "Album Artwork" folder is only 99.8MB.
I did a Time Machine backup yesterday and the only thing changed on the computer was the artwork. However, when Time Machine launched to do a backup it said there was 30GB(!!!) to back up?!?!?
I am assuming something got corrupted in the iTunes library file during the crash and now it thinks it has to back up part of the music.
So, that is what caused the problem. My question is, what is the easiest way to simply restore the backup the Time Machine had completed yesterday before all this happened?? It doesn't seem like there is a simple way to accomplish this. It looks like TM is used to back up specific files or folders and not to restore the computer to a previous state.
Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!!

Time Machine backs up all files except those you exclude in TM prefs. It doesn't "know" what kind a file is; it just compares info about a file on the source drive to see if it has already been backed up, or if it is new or has changed and needs to be backed up again. For unchanged files or folders, TM simply creates another hard link on the backup drive.
iTunes artwork files are separate files. The assignments of artwork to particular music files are saved in another file within the iTunes application (which is actually a package, a folder containing other files). So if all you did was add album artwork, TM would back up each new artwork file, and a new copy of the hidden file within the iTunes application containing the artwork-music links.
The following is speculation on my part, but it seems logical:
TM uses records in the hidden File System Events log to identify any new or modified files. However, it is possible to have an FSE entry as to a particular file without modifying the file (e.g. open, then close). So TM doesn't "know" until it actually compares the source file with the backup file (if one exists) whether a file is new or has been modified.
Hope this helps.

Lost older backups after Time Machine restore

After a disk crash, I had to replace the drive in my Intel Core Duo Mac Mini and reinstall Snow Leopard. The restore from Time Machine on my external Firewire drive worked perfectly, bring back all my apps and files.
However, Time Machine no longer lets me go back into the older archives to restore files. I have only backups beginning after the reinstall.
Worse, Time Machine now says I'm out of space on Firewire drive, as if it wants to back up the entire system again.
Any way to get my old Time Machine back?

No, don't do that. Moving, deleting, or changing things in your backups can corrupt them.
But, very carefully, look at the drive via the Finder.
There should be a single Backups.backupdb folder at the top level, containing one folder named for your Mac. Inside that is a series of dated folders, one for each backup (plus a "Latest" alias). Inside each of those is what appears to be a complete duplicate of the folder structure on your drive. If your last backup failed or was interrupted, there'll be an "in.Progress" package, too.
It's possible the crash corrupted something. One result might be TM starting a new "sequence" of backups. If so, there will be a second folder inside the Backups.backupdb folder. To view those backups, use the +*Browse ...+* option, per #17 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). To delete them, see #12 there.
How large is your TM drive, compared to the amount used on your internal HD? If it's more than 2.2 times, there should be room for a new backup. If not, your only choices are to start fresh with a different drive, or erase the current one and start over.

How can I restore an old iPhone backup from Time Machine?

Hi there,
I lost my iPhone 4S but have a extra iPhone 4 (used for travel) that I would like to restore the 4S backup to.
The problem is that the backup of my 4S has somehow disappeared from itunes and the only one that shows up is the iPhone 4 backup even though they are set up as different devices with different names. I know that the backup for my 4S is included with my Time Machine backups (on external harddrive) but I can't find the files. Also very strange is that I don't have the folder "MobileSync" in /Library/Application Support/MobileSync on my computer. I can't find that folder anywhere.
My computer is less that 6 months old and I know that I have not deleted that folder or any other that are preinstalled.
I'm using OS X 10.9.4 and I don't want to restore my hole computer from Time Machine, just the files that hold my 4S backup.
Also note that I have not backed up everything from my 4S phone to iClould so that's not an option.
I've tried everything including:
- Restoring the settings on the iPhone 4 to factory settings and then connecting to itunes.
- Deleting itunes and restoring it from Time Machine at a date that i knew had the original iphone backup.
Who ever can solve this for me deserves a gold medal. I'm truly desperate. I've searched all forums and haven't found a solution for this.
Thanks.

caxx wrote:
Also very strange is that I don't have the folder "MobileSync" in /Library/Application Support/MobileSync on my computer. I can't find that folder anywhere.
Correct.
You need to go to ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/.
The ~ indicates your User folder not the top level /Library/ folder.
Click on the desktop, then hold Option and go to Finder menu Go and Library will be there (only when holding Option as it is hidden).

Lost older backups on Time Machine

In looking for older files, I found that my Time Machine Backups only went back to March 17, 2012, 8:59 PM. The older ones were not here. Apple tech support was of no help. Anyone else have this problem? I would like to know if I screwed up and caused this.

See #E1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting

Can I manually delete older backups of Time Machine?

I have an external drive for use with Time Machine. I only want to keep the latest backup. Will it cause a problem if I go into the drive - select the older dated backups - right click and move to trash?
I don't want to wait for the disk to become full so time machine can delete them, as I have other files on the hard drive, and will add more.
Thanks

So if I partition a 1tb external hard drive, I can allocate 500GB for my time machine backups,(which will allow time machine to fill that 500gb space up and delete when necessary) and the other 500GB for other backed up files?
Yes.
Would this be a better method than having my time machine backups and other files together on the one partition?
Yes.
Is the reasoning behind not sharing the time machine drive with other non TM backups because it wastes more space as TM just keeps using up more until it's full?
Sort of. The problem with sharing TM backups with other files is what you described. A volume specified for TM backups eventually becomes full as a normal consequence of using it. At that point you are faced with the problem of adding more, non - TM backups to a volume that has reached its capacity: you can't. Tampering with Time Machine backups increases the possibility of corruption should you delete backups in a manner not consistent with the way Time Machine creates and maintains them.
Time Machine's biggest advantage is that it requires no user intervention, and is ideally suited to those who lack the discipline or skills to routinely perform this tedious exercise. Its biggest disadvantage is that is has few configurable options, and none that address your specific goal.

How do I restore quickbooks company file backup from time machine?

I wish to restore a previous company file that is backed up in time machine (Quick books 2014, mavericks OS)? Easy to do in windows but nothing comes up in help or in the menu items for restoring company file.

See How do I restore my entire system?

Is it possible to have two hard drives connected to my airport extreme and use one to store my itunes library/iphoto and the other to backup via time machine? Will the second (larger) drive back-up both my mac HD and my other external airport drive?

For the past year I've been using an external hard drive (HD1) connected to my airport extreme as the back-up location for time machine. This has worked fine without any issues. What I would like to do now is to move my itunes and iphoto libraries off of my laptop (space constraints) and store them on a second external hard drive (HD2) connected to the airport extreme. I have successfully connected the second hard drive using a Belkin powered USB hub. What I am wondering is if I direct my time machine back-ups to HD1 will it back-up both my mac HD as well as HD2? I apologize if this has already been answered but i've read conflicting responses on various message boards and a number of responses were dated so I wanted to make sure I received the latest information.
thank you

kosty wrote:
For the past year I've been using an external hard drive (HD1) connected to my airport extreme as the back-up location for time machine. This has worked fine without any issues.
That may be true, but you need to know that backing-up that way is unreliable and not supported by Apple. See: Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk. Do not be surprised if those backups suddenly turn up corrupted.
What I am wondering is if I direct my time machine back-ups to HD1 will it back-up both my mac HD as well as HD2?
No. Time Machine cannot back up from any network location. The 3rd-party utilities CarbonCopyCloner and ChronoSync may be workable alternatives.

Iphone backup via time machine

Hi all, im going to be setting up a new mac and i want to just transfer my latest iphone backup but when go into time machine and in the backup folder i see a load of back ups but no date etc. just a long line of numbers for each folder. is there a way i can tell what my last backup is for my iphone, ipod and ipad ?
THanks

Why not just use migration assistant to bring over your full user account, which includes your iTunes library and iDevice backups?
The backups aren't going to be very useful without being associated with your iTunes account anyway, since iTunes is going to try to erase your phone whenever you attempt to do a first sync anyway.

TS1337 Seagte hard drive replaced by Apple....Restore can't see backup on Time Machine???

Help...all was fine until this Seagate replacement. Now, no data, no apps, it must be on the time machine but the iMac can't see it. OS X 10.8.2
Thanks.

This has been posted to the Leopard forum. You will get a faster answer from the correct forum.

Backups no longer accessible via Time Machine UI

I bought a TC a couple of months ago and it worked flawless until last week. My TC still makes backups, but when I want to access a backup via Time Machine, it's no longer there. However when I browse through the sparsebundle on TC, I can still see all the old backups with their respective files.
All the backup data is still on the TC, but it's no longer easily accessible via Time Machine. Any ideas what I could do to make the backups visible again in Time Machine?

Start with the things in #E4 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Reverting back to Mountain Lion from Mavericks via Time Machine?

Hi all
I'm wondering if anybody has successfully downgraded from Mavericks back to Mountain Lion. I am fed up with all the bugs with Mavericks...I should never have upgraded. However, I did make a system backup via Time Machine before upgrading. I'm not sure if it is possible to go back, though. Has anyone successfully done it via Time Machine? I'm also having trouble getting to the restore menu - I have a PC keyboard (which works fine for the Mac), but it doesn't do anything when I hit Command (well, the PC equivalent) + R or Option when I restart. The only thing that seems to work is Command+Option+R, which takes me to the Internet recovery, though I'm not sure if I can go back to my old system via Time Machine on that. Anyway, would appreciate any thoughts on this.

Boot OS X Recovery by holding ⌘ r (two fingers) while you start your Mac. OS X Internet Recovery, which you were able to invoke with your non-Apple keyboard, will work just as well.
Once the Mac OS X Utilities screen appears, select Restore from Time Machine Backup.
Select the TM backup of your Mountain Lion system prior to upgrading - their backup dates and OS X versions will appear, so you will be looking for the most recent backup of your system when it was running OS X version 10.8.5.
When it completes, your Mac will restart and your previous system state will have been restored. After that, uninstall any third party software and system modifications incompatible with Mavericks before contemplating an upgrade.

ICloud files for iWork backed up via Time Machine?

I'm trying to figure out that if I work on files like pages and numbers and save it to iCloud, do they go to my MacBook where I can also back them up via Time Machine. I want to make sure that if files are accidentally deleted somehow that I can have a historical backup via Time Machine.
I don't see anywhere in the finder on my MacBook air that can show me where my iCloud work is being placed at. That is why I'm trying to figure out if there is a historical backup via Time Machine in case iCloud loses or corrupts a file.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Doug

Your iWork documents are kept in an invisible folder called Library, you can reveal it by opening the Finders Go menu while holding down the alt key, your iCloud documents are in a folder called Mobile Documents.
You shouldn't be working in these folders, but you would need to know where they are to restore from a Time machine back up, which does back them up.

Restoring to an older backup via time machine?

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