Time Machine backup corrupted

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Level 1

25 points

Time Machine backup corrupted

Just replaced the internal hard drive in my iMac because I thought it was failing.

Reinstalled 10.6, restored the Time Machine backup for the four users on the computer, and the symptoms have returned - spinning wheel at the startup, sometimes not finding the startup folder, sometimes long pauses between data accesses when it does startup, etc. Because there's a new hard drive inside, I'm assuming Time Machine has backed up some corrupted files that are leading to these symptoms.

My question: Is it possible to delete a couple days' worth of backups in Time Machine inside the "Backups.backupdb" folder (because the iMac was functioning well a couple days before the failure) and THEN restore?

Ron

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Dec 11, 2011 6:20 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 15, 2011 4:12 PM in response to ronlevesque

I'd first launch the Console utility and look for messages around the time of the problem that might explain the cause. If you don't understand what you find, copy a range of messages and paste them into a reply here.

You should also launch the Activity Monitor utility to see if that can show you the reason for any of that behavior.

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Answer 2

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Dec 15, 2011 4:50 PM in response to ronlevesque

ronlevesque wrote:

. . .

My question: Is it possible to delete a couple days' worth of backups in Time Machine inside the "Backups.backupdb" folder (because the iMac was functioning well a couple days before the failure) and THEN restore?

If William's suggestion doesn't help, much better would be to do a full system restore from an earlier backup, per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

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