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Restoring iTunes from Time Machine on different drive

I have a tricky problem involving iTunes. I am running a G5 Tower with OS 10.5.8 and iTunes 10.6.3. I am a DJ and my iTunes library is quite large, about 155GB. My tower has (or had) two hard drives, one for the operating system, and another for my iTunes library (among other things.) Unfortunately, my iTunes hard drive has failed, though I'm not too concerned as I have a Time Machine back-up (as well as my trusty iPod.) I had my Time Machine set to back up my OS drive and my iTunes folder on the second drive, but now that I have replaced the faulty drive, I cannot figure out how to restore just the iTunes folder since its original hard drive is physically gone. I can't restore to the OS drive due to lack of space. Any thoughts on how I could get around this?

G5 Power Mac, MacMini 80, 15, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jun 16, 2013 11:45 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jun 18, 2013 9:59 AM

Hey Raoul_Duke,


Check out the following instructions on how to restore individual files and folders from Time Machine and see if that helps:

You can use the timeline on the right side of the window to reach a certain point back in time (the timeline shows the times of all backups on your backup drive). If you don’t know exactly when you deleted or changed a file, you can use the back arrow to let Time Machine automatically travel through time to show you when that folder last changed.

Note: Dates in pink indicate the data resides on your Time Machine backup device. Dates in white indicate the data resides on your Mac. In OS X Mountain Lion and Lion, portable Macs have the feature of local snapshots. See thisarticle for details.

You can also perform a Spotlight search in the Time Machine Finder Window search field to find a file. Simply type the Spotlight search field and use the back arrow to have Time Machine search through your backups to find what you are looking for.

Before you restore a file, you can also use Quick Look to preview a file to make sure its the one you want. Highlight the file and press the Space Bar to bring up a quick look.

To restore, select the file/folder and click the "Restore" button. The file will automatically be copied to the desktop or appropriate folder. If the file you are restoring has another file in the same location with the same name, you will be prompted to choose which file to keep or keep both.


Mac Basics: Time Machine

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427


Cheers,

David

2 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jun 18, 2013 9:59 AM in response to Raoul_Duke

Hey Raoul_Duke,


Check out the following instructions on how to restore individual files and folders from Time Machine and see if that helps:

You can use the timeline on the right side of the window to reach a certain point back in time (the timeline shows the times of all backups on your backup drive). If you don’t know exactly when you deleted or changed a file, you can use the back arrow to let Time Machine automatically travel through time to show you when that folder last changed.

Note: Dates in pink indicate the data resides on your Time Machine backup device. Dates in white indicate the data resides on your Mac. In OS X Mountain Lion and Lion, portable Macs have the feature of local snapshots. See thisarticle for details.

You can also perform a Spotlight search in the Time Machine Finder Window search field to find a file. Simply type the Spotlight search field and use the back arrow to have Time Machine search through your backups to find what you are looking for.

Before you restore a file, you can also use Quick Look to preview a file to make sure its the one you want. Highlight the file and press the Space Bar to bring up a quick look.

To restore, select the file/folder and click the "Restore" button. The file will automatically be copied to the desktop or appropriate folder. If the file you are restoring has another file in the same location with the same name, you will be prompted to choose which file to keep or keep both.


Mac Basics: Time Machine

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427


Cheers,

David

Restoring iTunes from Time Machine on different drive

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