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I have a new MacBook Pro and instead of restoring it from a previous Time Machine backup, I was hoping I could access part of the backup and copy some contents on to the new MacBook Pro. Can it be done?
For example, my Time Machine backup has 80gb of music in it, can I access that from my new MacBook Pro and copy the music?
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
Yes. I recommend to use Time Machine interface. Open in Finder the folder where you want to restore the files, go to Time Machine logo (in menu bar) and enter to it
The Pondini TM Tip pagegives the links to the full Pondini site where you can find everything there is to know about Time Machine.
Your best bet is not to try to restore things "piecemeal." It's much too easy to miss things, and depending on the situation, you can have permissions problems.
It's best, by far, to use Setup Assistant when your new Mac first starts up; if you didn't, you'll end up with an extra user account and/or the transferred account(s) may lose permission to the backups. Instead, use one of the workarounds in the green box of Problems after using Migration Assistant.
Note that you can omit some broad categories of things, but you can't "pick and choose" individual items. So use the assistant to bring in what you want, and if that includes some things you don't want, then just delete the unwanted stuff.
Accessing parts of Time Machine backup...
