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jbrizzle

Q: Time Machine

You mention backing up a machine you want to get rid of to Time Machine. Have you tried to use such a backup? In my experience you cannot access individual files and folders backed up from a machine you no longer have. You can only do a full restore. This really, really limites Time Machine's value. You can't archive a couple of backups and retrieve files from them. The only way is to dedicate a drive and do a full restore, extremely time consuming and unhelpful. Am I missing something?

Time Machine, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Dec 10, 2013 8:51 AM

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Q: Time Machine

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  • by Winston Churchill,Solvedanswer

    Winston Churchill Winston Churchill Dec 10, 2013 9:03 AM in response to jbrizzle
    Level 10 (103,375 points)
    Apple TV
    Dec 10, 2013 9:03 AM in response to jbrizzle

    You can access the backed up files themselves from the back up file itself in the finder, you don't need Time Machine enabled to do this.

  • by jbrizzle,

    jbrizzle jbrizzle Dec 10, 2013 9:14 AM in response to Winston Churchill
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 10, 2013 9:14 AM in response to Winston Churchill

    Good show Winston, many thanks. Much better than nothing; and it is still a pitiful offering from Apple, as each incremental backup is in its own folder, so endless fishing is required to put a foldder together to restore. It is completely impractical to restore more than an occasional file this way.

     

    I understand why it is organized that way, they just need to let time machine access it and present you the information as it usually does.

  • by Winston Churchill,

    Winston Churchill Winston Churchill Dec 10, 2013 9:35 AM in response to jbrizzle
    Level 10 (103,375 points)
    Apple TV
    Dec 10, 2013 9:35 AM in response to jbrizzle

    No back up facility will restore an incremental back up without the original back up software being available.

  • by jbrizzle,

    jbrizzle jbrizzle Dec 10, 2013 11:05 AM in response to Winston Churchill
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 10, 2013 11:05 AM in response to Winston Churchill

    Yes, but this is a little different. When you have TM available, you can't get it to retrieve files from a backup you made from another machine. Say, a machine you used to have. You can only do a full restore of everything. So as an archive*, a TM backup is useless. TM has that lovely flip through interface, but only if your are flipping through a backup of the machine you are currently running on. Otherwise, nothing. Try it, see if you find differently. I'd love to hear they fixed this.

     

     

     

    * I do understand the issues with confusing backups with archives. This might be a case where you had multiple backups and chose to use one as an accessible archive and freeze the others as backups of that one.

  • by DBTechnology_1,

    DBTechnology_1 DBTechnology_1 Oct 26, 2014 9:38 PM in response to jbrizzle
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 26, 2014 9:38 PM in response to jbrizzle

    Time machine saves everything from a computer. If you are getting rid of a computer, and are not planning on doing a full restore to another, I wouldn't use time machine. At that point, I would save the files I wanted on a regular storage device. If you aren't doing a full restore, it is pointless to back up all the system files and such.

  • by dpacheco_utd,

    dpacheco_utd dpacheco_utd Dec 17, 2014 6:32 AM in response to DBTechnology_1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 17, 2014 6:32 AM in response to DBTechnology_1

    This thread is very important to me.  I currently use Time Machine and a Time Capsule to perform backups.  I am about to get a new Mac.  I thought it would be a seamless "swap-one-for-the-other" and march on.  I would like to have have old files available (i.e., from an archives) on my new machine without having to restore in entirety.  If I am following, I should actually copy any file that I believe I will need or use onto a flash drive (or similar) and then start over with the new machine.