Help getting files off of an old decommissioned time machine hard drive

[Kez9999]

I have an old time machine drive that I took offline because it was nearly full. I subsequently started a new time machine backup on a new drive.

I have had a mishap and would like to retrieve files from the old decommissioned drive. When I plug it in and select the disk, I am unable to see the backups on the old drive; they do not show up in the timeline. I desperately want to recover these files; is there a way to extract them if they are not showing up in the timeline?

 

[Nermal]

It's been a while since I've done this, but I think you can just view the drive in Finder. There's some sort of "main" backup folder (which may require you to right-click and Show Package Contents to see inside), and then you'll come to a big list of folders all named with the dates of the various backups. There will also be one called "Latest" or something to that effect. Once you're in there, you can see all the individual files and copy them as normal.

 

[Kez9999]

It's been a while since I've done this, but I think you can just view the drive in Finder. There's some sort of "main" backup folder (which may require you to right-click and Show Package Contents to see inside), and then you'll come to a big list of folders all named with the dates of the various backups. There will also be one called "Latest" or something to that effect. Once you're in there, you can see all the individual files and copy them as normal.

When I do this all I see is the "sparsebundle" file; not any backups?

 

[Fishrrman]

This reply won't help you, but...

... if this had been an old cloned backup created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, all the user has to do is connect the drive and let it mount on the desktop. Everything will be "there", in plain old finder format -- NO "sparse bundles" to deal with.

Just copy one file, or several files, as much as you need.

 

[chown33]

Double-click the sparsebundle. This should open it (mount it), and a disk-image volume for it should appear on your desktop. Does this happen?

If there's a volume on your desktop, open it. What appears in the Finder window?

If the decomissioned TM backup was encrypted, you will need the encryption password in order to open the sparsebundle. If you no longer have the password, then the data on it is almost certainly unrecoverable. It is the nature of encrypted disks that they are unrecoverable without the password.

 

[MacCheetah3]

There’s this (although, it won’t help if you only want individual files):

Restore your Mac from a backup - Apple Support

Restore files from your backup.

support.apple.com

When I do this all I see is the "sparsebundle" file; not any backups?

So, nothing similar to:


The icons may appear different, perhaps even generic folders.