TIME MACHINE - old backup access

[ido shor]

Hey!
I want to enter an old time machine backup I have, but since I switched to another hard drive (because the hard drive I was using run out of space and I didn't want it to delete old backups on it), it seems I no longer have access to the old one.

is there any way to reconnect the old hard drive backup too?

thanks!

Dosho.

 

[Stephen.R]

If you know what you want by date, you can just browse the contents using the finder.

Time machine is multi-drive award (it’ll alternate between them when backing up usually) but I’m not sure how it presents multiple drives for restoring, possibly it just shows all available dates and just retrieves from the required drive.

 

[ido shor]

Hey, thanks.

yes, I know I can browse through all the dates. but the list is very long, and I am not sure where exactly is the file I am looking for. using the brilliant Time machine interface I can easily go through all the past versions of a specific folder.

so.... that said, is there any way to reconnect the time machine to an older backup?

thanks again tough.

 

[Stephen.R]

Well you can select the drive in the tm interface, the key thing would be ensuring that it doesn’t delete old backups because of a lack of space, so you’d need to select it, immediately cancel the backup it schedules for 120 seconds later.

 

[ido shor]

yeah, that's what I thought too. disabled the automatic update etc. but when I try to enter this drive it asks me to confirm deleting all the data on the drive as if it's going to format it to become a new Time machine drive. that is a risk I am definitely not willing to take....
since the icon of the hard drive on the desktop doesn't appear as a time machine icon, I guess I should somehow tell the time machine to consider that drive as a backup... the Q is now do I do that...

 

[Weaselboy]

Try holding down the option key then click the TM icon in the menu bar. Then select Browse Other Backup Disks...

 

[ido shor]

Now there is a nice easter egg right there...

thanks Weaselboy!