HT201250: Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac

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davidandbethan
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: I just want to retrieve a few old photos - do I have to restore the whole of iphoto library?

My laptop is low on memory so I deleted a lot of photos. Now I want to retrieve just one or two from my external hard drive where I had them backed up using time machine but it seems like the only option is to restore the entire library - something I don't have enough memory to do!

MacBook

Posted on May 15, 2013 12:51 PM

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davidandbethan

Q: I just want to retrieve a few old photos - do I have to restore the whole of iphoto library?

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  • by mende1,

    mende1 mende1 May 15, 2013 12:52 PM in response to davidandbethan
    Level 10 (93,329 points)
    Desktops
    May 15, 2013 12:52 PM in response to davidandbethan

    Welcome to Apple Support Communities

     

    I'm sorry but you can only restore the iPhoto library because Time Machine can't restore individual photos. In this case, you have to make free space on your hard disk before being able to restore the iPhoto library

  • by Niel,

    Niel Niel May 15, 2013 12:53 PM in response to davidandbethan
    Level 10 (314,476 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 15, 2013 12:53 PM in response to davidandbethan

    Purchase a second external drive and restore the library to that. In addition to being able to restore the whole library, having a copy of them on another drive ensures that they won't get completely deleted in the event the Time Machine drive runs out of space or dies. If desired, you can set Time Machine to back that drive up as well.

     

    (82720)

  • by davidandbethan,

    davidandbethan davidandbethan May 16, 2013 6:33 AM in response to Niel
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 16, 2013 6:33 AM in response to Niel

    OK, actually, I answered my own question. You can find the external drive in Finder, open up the backup.backupdpd wotsit, find the iphoto library, right click and click on open package contents. Voila, all your photos.

  • by Sandy A McCarthy,

    Sandy A McCarthy Sandy A McCarthy Jan 27, 2014 9:14 AM in response to davidandbethan
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 27, 2014 9:14 AM in response to davidandbethan

    I copied photos to a flash drive, but when I re-imported into iPhoto, the original picture-take date was lost.  Any idea how to avoid this?