How does Time Machine restore process work on external drive?

[CC88]

Dear all

I need to clarify Time Machine behavior before I need it

When I was on my mini 2018 I'm sure there was a folder called "Latest" on Time Machine folder structure.

Yesterday I was looking at my TM disk connected to my Mac Studio and I noticed a folder created on December 12th that contains my Lightroom folder with around 1tb of data. Next I found a new folder created on December 17th and a Lightroom folder in it with 300mb of data.

So the question: if I need to completely restore my LR folder on a new disk, does TM will restore a 1.3tb folder using the incremental data all in an automatic way?

I don't have to merge the folders, right?

Thanks a lot.

 

[Bigwaff]

I don't have to merge the folders, right?

You don't have to merge folders. You use the TM app to restore files. You're not supposed to drag-no-drop from the Finder.

 

[ignatius345]

This may be of interest:

Time Machine in Sonoma: Back up and restore external volumes

How well can Time Machine back up other volumes, such as those on external drives? Can it restore them when the original disk fails or goes missing?

eclecticlight.co

Eclectic Light Co. is truly brilliant -- an exhaustive deep dive into the inner workings of MacOS.

 

[CC88]

You don't have to merge folders. You use the TM app to restore files. You're not supposed to drag-no-drop from the Finder.

So if I understood correctly, if I restore the first available date, it take care of restoring ALL the data in the folder and I finally have a 1.3tb folder, right?

Thanks a lot.