open SL time machine on Lion

HELP!

I have upgraded to lion, and it seems to have deleted some of my files. (I don't know how many, but enough)

I partitioned my external hard drive so I could have a time machine for SL, and a new one for Lion. I did a time machine backup right before install, but I don't know how to access it. My Lion TM only goes back to after I installed it (obviously).

I forgot to use superduper or carbon copy cloner, and I understand that I cannot boot from TM.

So how can I access the SL time machine and get my files back?

Also, why did this happen!?

Thanks anyone!

What you can do is reinstall Lion. It should ask you if you have a Time Machine backup - that's when you can restore.

Or, boot to your Lion Recovery partition and select Time Machine. You do that by rebooting and holding down the Option key. Select the Recovery partition to boot from.

And... please read our guidelines concerning language and masked words. Since you're new, I went ahead and edited your post to remove the masked words.

I'm sorry but I don't understand your advice.

chscag said:

What you can do is reinstall Lion. It should ask you if you have a Time Machine backup - that's when you can restore.

Click to expand...

do you mean the SL backup?

chscag said:

Or, boot to your Lion Recovery partition and select Time Machine. You do that by rebooting and holding down the Option key. Select the Recovery partition to boot from.

Click to expand...

so does this mean i CAN boot from the TM? In particular, can I boot from the SL TM and then (hopefully) find my files?

thanks again

so does this mean i CAN boot from the TM? In particular, can I boot from the SL TM and then (hopefully) find my files?

Click to expand...

Time Machine backups by themselves are not bootable. But you can boot to the Lion Recovery partition by holding down the OPTION key on startup and then selecting the Recovery partition. Or reboot and hold down Command+R. Once you're in recovery, select Time Machine restore.