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restoring from time machine folder - alternative method?

I have an external hard drive with time machine backups on it from my iMac before it died. If I use finder, I can open the external drive and then open the backups folder and see all the backups from various dates in the past. If I choose a date and open the folder and then go into the data folder within, I can work my way to a folder that has files in it that I want to restore. Can I just drag this folder to my other hard drive to “restore” the files? Or do I have to use time machine or migration assistant to restore these files? Can I do it this alternative way (just using finder) or will I lose data if I do so? It’s a 5 TB backup drive and my iMac had about half of its 2 TB drive used. There are so many backups - are all of my files inside each of these backup folders for each date? That doesn’t seem possible.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Nov 2, 2021 5:33 PM

Top-ranking reply

steve626

Level 6

11,501 points

Posted on Nov 2, 2021 9:13 PM

Most of the time you can use a simple Finder copy to copy specific files from a Time Machine drive to a different drive. You might want to create a special folder on your desktop to put those files into. Depending on how you set up your Mac you might run into permissions issues, which can usually be addressed in Terminal.

The preferred way is to run Setup Assistant (on first boot up of the new computer) or Migration Assistant to migrate files or entire user accounts from a Time Machine backup.

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restoring from time machine folder - alternative method?

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