Accidentally backed up Time Machine to the wrong external drive.

[pb3960]

Hi,

Today, I mistakenly started to back up Time Machine to the wrong external drive. I canceled it within 10 seconds of the start. However, now whenever I try to access my folders on the external drive I get the error "The folder '...' can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents." I'm desperately trying to recover these files so if anyone has had experience with this or knows how to get access back it'd be greatly appreciated. I don't think all of the files got deleted because the drive is still nearly full.

Thank you in advance.

Also, the folders now have red minus signs at the bottom corner of each folder.

 

[chscag]

It appears that Time Machine locked the external drive for itself. Try this: Right click on the external drive and select "get info". Click the lock at the bottom and enter your password, then change the permissions on the drive to read and write.