Recovering From Time Machine

[galaxy7]

So apparently my hard drive died recently on my iMac. Have not diagnosed or done anything with it yet. I had a time machine which is fine. Took my time machine to moms house who has an iMac, to plug in and check it out.

Of first note, it won’t accept it as a time
Machine. Her iMac will not let it sync up and use the hard drive as a time machine.

I can access the drive from Finder and get to all the backups on the drive. Everything is there, everything EXCEPT photos. I can drive down to the Pictures photo where all the photos from iPhoto are supposed to reside, but it’s telling me I cannot import the files!!! I’ll get the exact pop-up verbiage, but what the heck is going on here??

 

[chabig]

I don’t understand why you’re attaching the Time Machine drive to your mother’s iMac. Your mother’s machine doesn’t need to be involved.
Put a new hard drive into yours and restore it directly from Time Machine.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203981

 

[Fishrrman]

My "Fishrrman's why the heck is he posting this again?" reply:

If you had been using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper (instead of TM), your iMac would be back up and running RIGHT NOW while you decided what to do next.

Just sayin'...

 

[galaxy7]

I don’t understand why you’re attaching the Time Machine drive to your mother’s iMac. Your mother’s machine doesn’t need to be involved.
Put a new hard drive into yours and restore it directly from Time Machine.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203981

Not sure why you don’t understand that. I wanted the reassurance that all my stuff was there. Also needed to get to a document while I wait to get this one fixed.
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My "Fishrrman's why the heck is he posting this again?" reply:

If you had been using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper (instead of TM), your iMac would be back up and running RIGHT NOW while you decided what to do next.

Just sayin'...

Had been! Yup, that’d be great. The only shame here is that I’m not as educated and forward thinking as you. Had always been of the thought that a time machine and iCloud served as the safety net.

 

[Spudlicious]

My "Fishrrman's why the heck is he posting this again?" reply:

If you had been using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper (instead of TM), your iMac would be back up and running RIGHT NOW while you decided what to do next.

Just sayin'...

I use both CCC and TM because they're very different things. CCC provides the clone (refreshed a couple of times per week) I'll boot from if my internal SSD ever fails, while TM allows me to recover that file I regret deleting weeks or months ago.

 

[galaxy7]

I understand all that guys, I do. Great advice and sure, wish I had known about it before the failure, but I didn’t. So, trying to move on from there and just get answer to my question. Why can’t I access the photos? Will they be there when I do a restore on a new device?

 

[goldbuffalo]

As far as I know iPhoto’s is one file.

Mine is under Users, Pictures, iPhoto library

Search the internet for using multiple iPhoto libraries

You need the app to see them, it’s not just a bunch of pictures.

 

[mikehalloran]

Had always been of the thought that a time machine and iCloud served as the safety net.

CCC is not needed but it is convenient if you suffer a complete crash—you can boot, download the latest installer and use that on the new drive. Having a USB stick with an OS installer works also.

After you replace the drive and install the OS, you should restore from the last complete backup—if Time Machine, then that and not the "clone".

Everything is there, everything EXCEPT photos. I can drive down to the Pictures photo where all the photos from iPhoto are supposed to reside, but it’s telling me I cannot import the files!!! I’ll get the exact pop-up verbiage, but what the heck is going on here??

If you have Photos stored on iCloud, that's where they still are if your iCloud settings are set that way unless you checked a box to also store them on your Mac. Neither Time Machine nor CCC will help you if that's where they are.

Can you see your photos on your phone? If so, you can see them on the Mac when you get the settings right.

Google is your friend. There are a number of Apple support documents re iCloud that can you'll need to see before you find the right ones.

 

[galaxy7]

I have significantly more photos on the Mac than the phone. I had it set up such that photos taken on phone and iPad were shared with other devices, thus they were also on my Mac. I did not have photos on my Mac saved to the cloud (unfortunately), but I didn’t check, select, or do anything that should prevent them from being on TM.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

You beauty!

We have moved Mike somewhat Fisho.

 

[galaxy7]

So I got my new hard drive and computer home. Got it all booted up and went through the steps where it ask you if you want to restore from another iMac, time machine, and so forth. I selected my time machine and proceeded on. It did a scan of the time machine to analyze the space and content and all that’s jazz. I could see all my files and folders on the time machine as we were going through the install steps. Got all the way done, no problems. It restarted and the log in screen showed up with my profile and profile picture just like it used to be. Logged in...nothing! Nothing there. It looked nothing like my old iMac image.

????

Now, when I enter time machine, it won’t go back in time at all. I can get to all my old saves if I dig down in time
Machine through the Finder folder structure, but that’s the only way I can get to anything from the past.

That did NOT go the way I expected it to. What did I miss or do wrong?

 

[mikehalloran]

So I got my new hard drive and computer home. Got it all booted up and went through the steps where it ask you if you want to restore from another iMac, time machine, and so forth. I selected my time machine and proceeded on. It did a scan of the time machine to analyze the space and content and all that’s jazz. I could see all my files and folders on the time machine as we were going through the install steps. Got all the way done, no problems. It restarted and the log in screen showed up with my profile and profile picture just like it used to be. Logged in...nothing! Nothing there. It looked nothing like my old iMac image.

????

Now, when I enter time machine, it won’t go back in time at all. I can get to all my old saves if I dig down in time
Machine through the Finder folder structure, but that’s the only way I can get to anything from the past.

That did NOT go the way I expected it to. What did I miss or do wrong?

Did you disable Spotlight indexing on your TM volume? If not, it can take quite awhile to re-index the TM volume—weeks if you let your Mac go to sleep; a couple of days if you don’t. The index is stored on your boot drive so it must start from scratch when you replace it. If you did disable it, then this is expected behavior.
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I have significantly more photos on the Mac than the phone. I had it set up such that photos taken on phone and iPad were shared with other devices, thus they were also on my Mac. I did not have photos on my Mac saved to the cloud (unfortunately), but I didn’t check, select, or do anything that should prevent them from being on TM.

Really? It’s very easy to make that mistake in the Options.

 

[galaxy7]

Did you disable Spotlight indexing on your TM volume? If not, it can take quite awhile to re-index the TM volume—weeks if you let your Mac go to sleep; a couple of days if you don’t. The index is stored on your boot drive so it must start from scratch when you replace it. If you did disable it, then this is expected behavior.

I have no earthly what you’re talking about, LOL! Sorry, but I’m not familiar with that setting. I simply followed the prompts using migration assistant and it didn’t work. I got there though. Had to do it the hard way. Opened the backup files on the hard drive (TM) and copied and pasted everything I needed back onto the computer, including all my photos. Not sexy, but it worked and everything is there, including all the photos.

Really? It’s very easy to make that mistake in the Options.

One reason I initially had it this way is that I don’t want every single picture ever taken and saved (that’s on the computer) on my phone and iPad. I don’t know if there’s a way to save ALL photos to my cloud, but not have them all show up on every device.