Mail Back up and transfer problem

Hi WVFox,

Connect to the Time Capsule and open the sparseimage backup file of your laptop, mounting this will take some time so be patient. After it's mounted go to the folder called "latest" and browse to Users > Yourname > Library and copy the Mail folder to your desktop mac. Then on your desktop mac go to Mail File menu > Import and take it from there.

Don't forget to 'eject'/unmount the laptop sparseimage and time capsule once you copied the Mail folder to your desktop mac.

Message was edited by: Pr0digy V.

don't copy anything from the backup drive using Finder! TM backups are protected by "deny everybody everything" ACLs and if you do it that way you'll inherit those things if you do so. if you need to restore something from a different TM backup it can be done properly from TM interface. control-click on TM in the dock and choose "browse other TM disks". this will let you brows the backups of the other computer and restore what you want where you want to. also, importing Mail that way will not work for any imap accounts. the easiest thing to do is to import the whole Mail setup for all accounts. this will override whatever mail you've set up on the other computer already so you might want to do it on a new user account where Mail has not been set up yet. quit mail and restore the folder /users/username/library/mail AND the file /users/username/library/preferences/com.apple.mail.plist from the backup to the corresponding locations on the new computer. then start Mail and let it import messages when it asks for it. when it's done it will look just like it did on the old computer.

V.K. wrote:
don't copy anything from the backup drive using Finder! TM backups are protected by "deny everybody everything" ACLs and if you do it that way you'll inherit those things if you do so.

Never had any problems with it myself, it just asks for the admin password once and then it's done.
imho both described methods work equally well.

Pr0digy V. wrote:

V.K. wrote:
don't copy anything from the backup drive using Finder! TM backups are protected by "deny everybody everything" ACLs and if you do it that way you'll inherit those things if you do so.

Never had any problems with it myself, it just asks for the admin password once and then it's done.

it asks for an admin password precisely because of those ACLs. it will do so any time you want to move, edit or delete a file restored in this way. it should not be done using that method and in general there is no reason to manipulate TM backups using finder. it should be done from TM interface.