System Restore

I have Mavericks OSX 10.9
Can any one please tell me if a Mac Computer has a System Restore. That is to restore the computer back to how it was a couple of days ago.
I have inadvertently trashed years of photos from my iPhoto program.
I would have thought my external time machine would have them but they seem to be unavailable.
I can access everything ells but not iPhotos.

TimeMachine is the default backup system. No System Restore. I'm not an iPhoto expert, but as I understand, the photos in iPhoto are actually stored in a database, not as individual files, so if you are searching for them on TM by the filenames, then you may not find them. Perhaps an iPhoto expert can chime in here for you.

One thing: for now the LESS you do to the drive the more likely you can recover.

There is no System Restore in Mac OS X. If you've been making full Time Machine backups automatically, then your photos should have been backed up. Remember, the photos are all contained within your photo library if you were using iPhoto. Did you try to find your iPhoto library from the Time Machine backups you have?

Thanks for the quick response guys. As I have said when I go into Time Machine only todays page is available previous days seem to be inaccessible. Anything ells to access like mail and documents no problem.
O woe is me.

P.S.
I have a memory stick with a lot of the photos,not all. Can you explain how to download these from the memory stick. Once there on the desktop is it a matter of just dragging and dropping into iPhoto or is there an easier way.

Hold off on restoring for a bit. The more you do to the hard drive the less likely of a successful recovery. Is the TM drive an external drive? If so, use Finder to open it, then look in the Backups.backupdb folder to see what's there. Report back here. What should be there is another folder, and in the folder a series of folders with your backups. Don't try to do anything, just report back what you find.

Restore

I went into My Book opened Backups.backupdb that opened a folder with my name and iMac opened that in there are dozens of folders. That's as far as I have gone/

The best way is to enter Time Machine and navigate to a date that you know the photos were still in your library. After selecting the date from the right side, a Finder like window should open showing everything on your Macintosh HD (if you've been making full backups). From there navigate to your user folder, pictures, and then "iPhoto Library". Select the iPhoto Library and then select restore. The rest is easy.

Are you not seeing the iPhoto Library when you follow the above directions?

Try what chscag suggests. If there are lots of folders in that drive then you have lots of backups and one of them should have your photos. So use Time Machine, find the date where the iPhoto Library appears and restore that, as he said.

Thanks for that chscag the time machine is just not working for iPhoto, every thing ells but not iPhoto.

Will wait for MacinWin, he seemed to be on the right track, see what he come up with.
mousetrap.

mousetrap said:

Thanks for that chscag the time machine is just not working for iPhoto, every thing ells but not iPhoto.

Will wait for MacinWin, he seemed to be on the right track, see what he come up with.
mousetrap.

Click to expand...

What do you mean, "not working?" Have you blocked iPhoto from the TM backups? If not, they should be there. Are you getting any messages?

If you can't find your iPhoto Library in its normal place in your Time Machine backups... then you either didn't back it up or you may have moved your iPhoto Library somewhere else. Can you verify that your iPhoto Library is where it's supposed to be and that it wasn't moved?

I'll let you work with Jake on this as he's got some good ideas. Hopefully he can help you recover your photos. You might also be thinking about purchasing data recovery software.

Thank you gentlemen ill give it more thought tomorrow it''s been a long day for an old fella. mousetrap