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How to restore a stolen or seriously damaged USB drive previously saved with time machine ?

Opening time machine allows to access, browse and restore the back-up history of a (previously saved) external drive if that external drive is connected with a mac.


But if for any reason, for example if the external USB drive previously saved by time machine have been stolen, it cannot been connected with a mac. In that case time machine, despite the fact that its back-up are available, do not propose that non connected but saved drive in the list of the mac internal or usb or network drives to be browsed and restored.


Question is : how to browse and restore the available time machine back-up of an external USB drive previously saved but currently not connected with a mac despite the fact that by default time machine do not propose to browse its history and restore it ?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 5, 2023 4:13 PM

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Posted on Jun 6, 2023 11:56 PM

By the way can you confirm that the content of each "aged" folder (e.g. 2023-05-31-121530 for may 31, 12:15:30) is the full back-up of that date and not an incremental back-up, i.e. the changes since previous back-up ?


No, each one contains the new files with pointers yo the last new files which has the newest changed files with pointers to the last changed files, a infinitum.

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Jun 6, 2023 11:56 PM in response to Théo de France

By the way can you confirm that the content of each "aged" folder (e.g. 2023-05-31-121530 for may 31, 12:15:30) is the full back-up of that date and not an incremental back-up, i.e. the changes since previous back-up ?


No, each one contains the new files with pointers yo the last new files which has the newest changed files with pointers to the last changed files, a infinitum.

Jun 6, 2023 9:57 AM in response to ku4hx

Thank you ku4hx for that answer,


Can you in addition specify how to mitigate the risk you raise of damaging TM dataset by, as you suggest, accessing them with the finder app as a workaround of the TM app not working? Is it simply avoiding to click on files in order to not edit them ?


By the way can you confirm that the content of each "aged" folder (e.g. 2023-05-31-121530 for may 31, 12:15:30) is the full back-up of that date and not an incremental back-up, i.e. the changes since previous back-up ?


Thanks in advance.

Jun 6, 2023 11:23 AM in response to Théo de France

Reboot the Mac into Recovery mode with the external Time Machine drive connected. Run Disk Utility First Aid on that main TM drive name. When you see a green completion, reboot the Mac normally removing the external drive before the Mac actually reboots.


In System Preferences > Time Machine, switch it off as you don't want the current operating system to write to it. Mount the older Time Machine drive, and then launch the /Applications/Time Machine.app to present your Restore interface with past dates on it. You use this mode for the purpose of restoring a file or folder, but not as a full Time Machine restore.

Jun 6, 2023 1:42 PM in response to ku4hx

No, no and no, ku4hx


The best answer to mitigate a risk is to specify which action will lead to a damage in order to avoid to do it. It is not to do nothing at all.


The question is not about confirming something about a specific drive…. That I have no more because it has been stolen. The question is about recovering its back-up from an healthy TM drive and an healthy Mac, so it is possible to explain that in a forum.


And again the issue is that when entering in TM , TM don’t allow you to restore a file / a folder previously saved in TM from a drive not currently connected to a Mac… or, if it allows it, the way of doing it is well hidden.


Whit that it seems useless that you continue to comment this thread this way.

Jun 6, 2023 1:53 PM in response to Théo de France

Théo de France wrote:

No, no and no, ku4hx

The best answer to mitigate a risk is to specify which action will lead to a damage in order to avoid to do it. It is not to do nothing at all.

The question is not about confirming something about a specific drive…. That I have no more because it has been stolen. The question is about recovering its back-up from an healthy TM drive and an healthy Mac, so it is possible to explain that in a forum.

And again the issue is that when entering in TM , TM don’t allow you to restore a file / a folder previously saved in TM from a drive not currently connected to a Mac… or, if it allows it, the way of doing it is well hidden.

Whit that it seems useless that you continue to comment this thread this way.


I am not certain what you're asking, and interpreting a lot-of-words question can be a challenge for me.


Time Machine can restore what it backs up, using the Time Machine interface.


It's not all that good at restoring external devices.


The following seems to maybe be discussing the same thing that you're asking about, but I'm guessing:


https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/366466/how-to-restore-external-hard-drive-from-time-machine-backup-the-right-way


Jun 7, 2023 6:59 AM in response to BDAqua

Thank you BDAqua for your answer given me in the meantime by phone by an apple employee :


You can simply use the finder for recovering data saved by Time Machine as Apple use a trick (pointers) to allow the finder to present you the folder tree of the Time Machine volume as a full back-up despite the fact that Time Machine back-up is incremental.



How to restore a stolen or seriously damaged USB drive previously saved with time machine ?

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