Aug042012

How can I recover data I backed up to my external hard drive with Time Machine?

nev nev asks:

How do I re-call information from my external hard disc (WD 1TB) connected through Time Machine.


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14 Answers -

0 votes

sampath widushan

August 5, 2012
0 votes

Dan Bibb

August 10, 2012

You can enter time machine through the clock icon on the upper right side of your toolbar. You can also manually view your data through a Finder window.

0 votes

Stephanie Guertin

August 15, 2012

Do you need a full backup, or are you restoring only a selected file? If it’s the first: boot up your Mac and open Migration Assistant (if you have a booting OS) or boot from the CD and run the installer (if you don’t.) Pick ‘migrate from a Time Machine backup or other disk’ and then the Time Machine option. That will do everything.
If you need just one file, open up Time Machine and navigate to the folder and the backup date that has your target file. Control-click on it and choose ‘restore’. Done.

anand

Hi I’ve booted up my mac and does exactly as you suggest but the wheel in migration assistant keeps spinning and doesn’t ever locate the time machine back up file on my external seagate drive thats plugged into the new machine I’m trying to migrate to. Any suggestions?

October 3, 2012
0 votes

VictorGeis

August 26, 2012

What I do is go to “System Preferences” then click “Time Machine” then tick the box “Show Time Machine status in menu bar”. Then you can click on the status bar Time Machine icon and click “Enter Time Machine”. From there you can restore your specific files.

0 votes

John Bastin

September 7, 2012

When you say “recall information,” do you mean you want to just recover one file, or do a complete restore of your hard drive?
To recover one file, click on the Time Machine icon in your Dock. The Time Machine window will open, showing a folder in the center and all the Time Machine backups, shown as single lines on the right side of your display.
When you move the cursor over those lines at the right, it will display the date of each backup. Select the one that is old enough to contain the file you want and click on it. The display will move to show the state of the system at that point in time. Move through the windows to find the file you want to recover, then click the “Restore” button on the right of the Time Machine bar at the bottom.
The software will ask you about copying versus replacing the file, what destination you want, and things like that. Then it will recover the file according to your instructions.
Hope this helps.

0 votes

Saurav Azad

September 12, 2012

just open the time machine application and restore back the computer from differen time machine backups .or just go to apples site for help on osx.

0 votes

Emily Louis

October 5, 2012

Simply go to “Time Machine” in Settings and click enter time machine. From there you should be able to restore any file that you backed up.

0 votes

Kavita

October 6, 2012

time machine gives a restore option also…do that…

0 votes

Katie Conway

October 8, 2012

Just open Time Machine and restore the contents through the application

0 votes

Paolo Maffezzoli

October 12, 2012

Open Spotlight and searchTime Machine, then restore files/folders through the Finder window.

0 votes

Lisa Robertson

October 13, 2012

My icon on my desktop is always red and it used to be green. What do I need to do to get the icon green again?

Also, when I backup my files it says “skipped” so how do I get the hard drive to backup all of my files?

0 votes

Siddhant Chaurasia

October 24, 2012

From System Preferences go to your time machine preferences