Manual restore from a Time Machine backup from a failing disk?

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Manual restore from a Time Machine backup from a failing disk?

The hard drive on the iMac seemed to be having issues. I called apple and they said to bring it in for a hard drive (recalled) replacement. So, I unplugged the TimeMachine backup drive, and took the iMac in to have the hard drive replaced. When I got it back, it had a fresh install of the OS.

I plugged in the external TimeMachine backup disk, and it wouldn't restore. After running Disk Utility several times (always errored out on the catalog file), I used disk drill to recover all of the files off of it. I saved all of the recovered TimeMachine files to the new internal hard drive. How can I retrieve my files from these backups?

I need mostly the latest version of my Documents folder (and contents), and Desktop folder contents. Eveything else would be a sweet bonus.

Posted on Jan 2, 2013 12:25 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 6, 2013 11:08 AM in response to Joey Delli Gatti

bump

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Answer 2

Jan 6, 2013 11:11 AM in response to Joey Delli Gatti

So the short version is that I have an external TimeMachine backup hard drive that had a corrupt catalog file. The partition was overwritten, but nothing else has been done to the disk.

How do I recover the TimeMachine backup from a hard drive that has been repartitioned?

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Jan 6, 2013 11:15 AM in response to Joey Delli Gatti

Can you open Time Machine at all or can't it find the backup?

If the backup doesn't mount:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1170

Inherit a backup: http://pondini.org/TM/B5.html

http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html

General troubleshooting:

http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11194

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3275 (note - older article)

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Answer 4

Jan 6, 2013 11:32 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks for those links. My problem is more of a data-recovery or disk-repair issue though. We tried to restore from a Time Machine backup and it wouldn't work. The Disk Utility wouldn't repair the TimeMachine disk. It stopped at the Catalog file and failed.

Then the drive was repartitioned. What we need is a way to bring back the old partition containing the TimeMachine backup, and then fix the catalog file (I think). If we can do that, then we should be able to restore from the TimeMachine backup - right?

I once used a Linux tool from a bootable CD that could do all of that, but don't remember what it was called.

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Answer 5

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Jan 6, 2013 11:45 AM in response to Joey Delli Gatti

In theory you should be able to restore.

If the hard drive is partitioned and one partition checks okay with Disk Utility, can you copy the Time Machine sparse image bundle to the partition the is okay, then delete it from the bad partition, and then try to repair it with Disk Utility. Brute force method, but I don't know of a program to help you.

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