Time Machine DELETED all of my data & will only show backed up data Jan 10

Question

My harddrive was replaced by Apple. I was not concerned about data loss because my time machine backs up every night. When I got the computer back, I followed the directions for the computer to use a time machine backup. But, when it pulled up the drive, the only date available was Jan 2010. Thinking I could backup when I got into the system, I went ahead with that date back up. The computer restarted and I, after a few tries, was able to access my backup as of March 18, 2011, elated, I hit "restore" and the file began to copy.
Near the end of the copy, an error message popped up indicating that the copy could not complete because of duplicate names (?). Thinking I could just restart the restore and fix, I went back into time machine but there existed no backups between Jan 2010 and last night.
Before the restore started, the files were there, my user names were there, everything was there, now they are gone!! I cannot find an entire year of my life. Can someone help, please!! And, no, I am not sophisticated enough to have erased my time machine backups.
I talked to Apple Support and they were at a loss and said they couldn't explain how, as it appears, that time capsule, as some point during the copying, backup-ed over the existing data and that all my data is now lost.

Answer 1

Nothappy123 wrote:
When your Mac first started up, and you got a window asking if you wanted to +Transfer your information,+ what did you select?
I selected to transfer my information from a Time Machine back-up. The lastest date it had was Jan 2010, which was strange because it backs up every hour (or at least it was supposed to)
That sounds like Time Machine had started a new "sequence" of backups in January 2010, and transferred your data from the old set.
After I got to the user screens, I signed in and went into time machine. It was a little tricky because it took all of my settings (passwords) back to 2010, so I it took me a minute to remember what my server password was. When I got into the star wars, after a couple of times entering the time machine, March 2011 magically showed up. I selected the hard drive and hit restore.
That explains more. Unfortunately, Apple does not make it clear that you can't do that. You can't restore the system you're running from that way.
Yes, I have a time capsule. How do I get to that? Honestly, I thought that was what I was in.
Yes, that's what I thought; you hadn't mentioned it before, and I wanted to be sure.
As mentioned above, what I think happened is, for some reason, in January 2010, Time Machine started a new set of backups, and restored from the old set instead of the new one.
To confirm that, do this:
From a Finder window, in +Column View,+ locate your Time Capsule in the sidebar and double-click it. You should get a display something like this:
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See if there are two (or more) +sparse bundles+ listed, as in the sample.
Post back with the results (or if you have trouble getting that screen -- I don't know how familiar you are with this).
That should clarify the situation.
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Did a little more digging. The backup is case-sensitive and i think my hard drive is case ignorant, which explains the copy fail. how do I fix?
No. That's different, unfortunately.
As odd as it seems, your backup drive can be case-sensitive. In fact, that's the what Time Machine uses when you let it format a backup disk for you.
The problem is if the old +*internal HD+* was case-sensitive, but the new one is not, it could explain part of what you're seeing.
All Macs come with the internal HD set up as case-ignorant, so if you bought it new, and didn't change it (which requires erasing and reinstalling everything), that's very unlikely.