Some assistance needed on getting data off of a Time Machine backup

To make this short, I had a major HD failure on an older external Lacie drive that I used as storage for all kinds of things. I had that drive backed up, along with everything else, onto another Lacie external drive. Coincidentally, after the storage drive failed, so did my newer Lacie drive used for backup, BUT it is assumed that this one if just a bad power supply. A new one should be here today so we'll see if it will spin up.
While waiting on the PS to arrive, I've decided to change backup strategy a bit and purchased a RAID array set up as RAID1. At least this way a drive failure won't screw me. I know, I still need to be careful since the drives are mirror's of each other so if the data is corrupted...anyway.
The RAID is up and running and Time Machine is working flawlessly (for now) on it. Once I get the PS for my other drive and providing it spins up, I need to pull data off of the old Time Machine backup in that drive, specifically for the storage drive. I know that on the TM drive there is a directory for that storage drive, but what I don't know is if I can just copy the latest dated directory for that drive and I'll get all the data or am I going to have to go through Time Machine to get at.
And that is the other problem. I don't think TM will give me access to that drives data since the drive is no longer connected to my system. I'm hoping I'm wrong on that and that there is a simple solution to get at the data.
So help if you can and keep your fingers crossed that the drive will spin up!
Anthony

WOW. After letting DW do it's thing and failing to be able to write a new directory, it WAS able to create one and use it create a preview of the the drive. It said the drive was damaged and the new directory couldn't be written.
Well, the preview seems to have worked OK and I was able to copy the data from my old "storage" drive to a new folder on my new backup drive. That took an incredibly long time, but it looks like all 67GB of data is intact. I'm currently writing zeros to the old drive after repartitioning it. That should take care of the volume structure problem, but certainly doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy about the drive stability.
And all this leaves me with another question. What the heck caused the volume structure to get completely hosed at the same time the other drive failed totally? Since TM was backing up the "storage" drive to this one, could the failure have caused something to get majorly messed up on the TM drive?
Or, could the TM drive failure been caused by all these darn TM errors that keep popping up for no rhyme or reason? And oh yeah, the errors are popping up on the brand new 3 day old drive, too. TM seems to work when it wants to!
All this mess makes me feel really uneasy about using TM at all. Should I change to Retrospect or something? Should I continue to use it and ignore the errors that so many of us seem to be plagued with? Can TM totally FUBAR a drive with these errors?
I need a drink after this mess, so please feel free to chime in with your thoughts and suggestions.
Thanks all for giving me advise and encouragement.
Anthony

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Is there a way to get my photos off an old time machine backup from an external hard drive?

Is there a way to get my photos off an old time machine backup from an external hard drive?

You will have to connect the Time Machine HDD and click on the Icon. You will see one folder called Backups.backupdb. Click on that and you will have to continue until you find the home folder. The iPhoto library (where the pictures are, not the application) will probably be in your pictures folder. You will have to drag that to your desk top. Then you will have access to individual images.
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Matt

MATT-MAC wrote:
My machine is really slow, the beach ball is spinning all too often - it's time for a clean install Snow Leopard
I agree with Barry; that's rarely very helpful on OSX. See below for some suggestions.
I have already done a final time machine backup. I want to restore email and accounts, safari settings, iTunes music and Document files - nothing else.
How do I do this without reinstalling the whole backup I've just made? Can I easily cherry pick the bits I want?
To a degree, yes. See #15 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), for the procedure to restore selected items, and #28 for the location of some common data files.
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One frequent cause of performance problems is simple: not enough free space on your OSX disk. If there's less than about 15% free (perhaps less on a large drive), your Mac will probably begin to slow down noticeably.
Another is "leftovers" from applications that weren't completely deleted. One clue to that, among other possible problems, is the size of your logs. See the green box in [OSX Log Files|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Logs.html]. If yours are large, it will show you how to find and deal with the culprits.
Another is running anti-virus software on OSX. Other than ClamXav, most of it is not only unnecessary, but more of a problem than having a virus! See Thomas Reed's [Mac Virus Guide|http://www.reedcorner.net/thomas/guides/macvirus].
If you suspect an actual problem with your installation of OSX, start by downloading and installing the 10.6.5 "combo" update. That's the cleverly-named combination of all the updates to Snow Leopard since it was first released, so installing it should fix anything that's gone wrong since then, such as with one of the normal "point" updates. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1324 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.
If that doesn't help, reinstall OSX from your Snow Leopard Install disc (that won't affect anything else), then apply the "combo" again.
Also see:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/performance.html
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html

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Thanks
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thanks,
the thing is the Mac was behaving strangely - that's why I sent it to the lab in the first place.
This Mac is just over a year old but it's content was initially migrated from the older mac.
And it (the new Mac) wasn't working properly from the get go..
It took ages for it to start up and wouldn't start up if any external disk was attached (via USB).
I had to start it up and only then connect external disks.
In the lab - They couldn't find and HW issues.
So they formatted and reinstalled the OS - I think that's all they've sone in the lab
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I have a late 2007 iMac that HD went bad. Only 51 sectors were bad and I was able to Carbon Copy off 99% of the data onto an external drive. I have gotten a new HD installed and have restored the Lion OS. My question is, How do I migrate all of the data that I was able to save to new system so everything is there? For example, all of my saved emails, Pictures, desktop, etc, etc.
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Okay, I have finally completed the task that I set about trying to complete a week ago.
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Confused, I then tried Carbon Copy Cloner and it too errored out, but on the third app in the apps folder of the first time machine back up file.
Before giving up I tried to clone the hard drive using Super Duper!
11 hours later I now have a perfectly working cloned hard drive. I redirected my time machines to the new hard drive and it backed up to the correct folder as if nothing had changed. So all is good now and I just wanted to thank everyone for their advice.
Thanks.
PS. I have no idea why DU and CCC errored when copying... but at this point, I don't really care. It worked with Super Duper!

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Restore all the visible items at the top level of your home folder.
Hold down the option key and select Go ▹ Library from the Finder menu bar. Enter Time Machine and restore all items in the Library folder. Log out and log back in as soon as the restore is complete.
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You'll have to reinstall all third-party applications from scratch, or restore them from another kind of backup, if you have one.
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See Pondini's TM FAQs, for details.

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Hi all,
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Some assistance needed on getting data off of a Time Machine backup

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