Need help restoring files from Time Machine back up of dead ext hard drive

[FaasNat]

Hi all. I was running an external hard drive on my Mac Mini to store my data. I backed up this hard drive to another external hard drive with Time Machine. Well, the time has come and my data hard drive died. I entered into Time Machine mode, but I can't seem to find a way to access my files that were from my data hard drive.

I found some stuff from searches that sort of implies that I need to plug in another external hard drive and name it the same that my data hard drive had. And then I'll be able to restore my files.

I don't have another external hard drive and would like to just restore some of the folders to my local hard drive to use until I can get a replacement.

Is there a way to do this?

Thanks!

 

[arw]

Can't you just navigate to the desired date and folder on your Time Machine drive (using Finder)?
Here's a sample Finder screenshot. I can browse the backed up volume and copy files/folders to any new destination.

 

[Brian33]

Is there a way to do this?

Yes -- you can use Finder. Double-click on your backup hard drive, and keep double-clicking on the appropriate folder to proceed down to the folder that has the name of the data hard drive. The you can simply drag-and-drop whatever files/folders you want onto your internal drive (or wherever you want).

At this point I can't remember the exact series of nested folder names, but I think you'll be able to tell... something like <date-time> --> <machine name> --> <drive name>.

EDIT: just realized that @arw showed a screenshot of the folder hierarchy!

 

[FaasNat]

Thanks arw and Brian33. I didn't realize you could access it directly. It took a little bit more work since the drive was a network drive, but I found a .sparsebundle file with a name that matched my machine. Mounted that image and was able to find my backups through the Finder.

Thanks again for the assistance!