Trying to restore old GarageBand projects, some will, some won't?

Question

I am on OS X 10.6.8, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, and before the last system update (to 10.6.8) I was running Time Machine on an outboard Samsung drive, and had an Iomega external drive to which I had moved my GarageBand folder (and its pointer) and all my projects.  With the update to 10.6.8, my Iomega drive was suddenly no longer accessible.  I read a note on the forum that said Firewire support was dropped with 10.6.8, so I reconnected the drive with USB, but still was unable to access.  I had the bright idea to restore my GarageBand projects from Time Machine, from before I had moved them to the outboard drive.  I can see the projects when I do a search for "garage" on my Time Machine backups, but have only been able to restore a handful of them.  The icon for some of the project files is a dark grey horizontal rectangle (the ones that =did= restore) then there are others that have a light grey horizontal rectangle as their file icon, and others that have the little tan guitar as their icons.  I'm figuring these may be sets of projects from the different versions of GarageBand that have lived under OS X in its various incarnations.  Whenever I select any project files other than the handful of dark-grey-rectangle files, and click "restore" in Time Machine, after asking me to select a target folder (which does exist on my Mac) I get a pop-up message that has "Copy" in the header for the pop-up, and says:
"The volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a backup."
Please help me understand (a) what that error message means, it sounds like the Time Machine program is trying to improperly create a backup on my main HD, but all I want to do is copy those files to my Mac, (b) how I can get my files out of Time Machine and back onto my main HD, and (c) if I can convert them to the current GarageBand format once I get them on my machine.
I also tried to restore from Time Machine the .mp3 files that were created from my GarageBand projects, but after selecting a group of those from a Time Machine search, I got the same message about "wrong case sensitivity for a backup"...  If I try to play them from my iTunes, where I had put them after creating the .mp3's in GarageBand, it gives me a message that the underlying file isn't present, so it can't play the song, which is why I'm trying to get those GarageBand files over from Time Machine.  If I had only not updated to 10.6.8, I think all would have been well. 
Something doesn't look quite right.  Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated.  I'm a songwriter and my old songs are now trapped in Time Machine!  I'm very nervous that I might accidentally delete them instead of rescuing them.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, no.  The error message I'm getting, about the volume not having the right case sensitivity for a backup, seems to be an inappropriate message, at least to my thinking.  I am only trying to restore some old files.  Seems like it would not have any problem.  And the first five I restored came back just fine, I chose "choose location" and just let them come into the Applications folder, then I moved them to a separate folder on the desktop just so I could see them all together.  When I went back to gather some more files, I started getting that "case sensitivity for a backup" message, and now I get it every time, even if I try to restore the same files that I already restored, to another folder of course.
It's like Time Machine thinks I'm making another backup, when all I'm trying to do is restore a few GarageBand .band files.
I played around with it some more, trying to restore a single file to an empty folder on my desktop, trying to restore to a thumb drive (got a "volume is not formatted properly" error, even though the drive already had some Quickbooks files on it I copied from my current machine successfully), and nothing I try is working.
Do I dare restart my computer and see if that clears something up?  Like I said before, I fear I will end up deleting my song files, or destroying access to my outboard Time Machine backup disk.  The original song files were on an Iomega external disk that my Mac cannot access anymore, it may be crashed, I will have to take it to the Genius bar to have someone look at it.  But it is frustrating to see those files in my Time Machine backups and not be able to get them back on my main disk!!!!!  Thanks for the help you gave, but there was nothing in there that pertained to this particular problem.  Any other suggestions?  Should I "eject" my Time Machine external disk and then restart the computer and reattach the Time Machine disk?  Will that protect those files?
Sorry to be so full of questions. I really just need help getting these files off the Time Machine.  Sounds so simple on the tutorial, but it is just not happening here.  Thanks again, please, any other suggestions please send them on.