Time Machine won't travel back in time.

[aquilla321]

Hi Everyone, I suspect this may be a common problem, but as yet, I've not been able to find the answer from various searches that I've been doing - and I'm not especially technically proficient, so I could really use some help. I decided to wipe clean and completely restore my macbook pro. I backed up to my external hard drive before I did so (using Time Machine). All works fine, but when I enter Time Machine, it won't allow me to scroll back in time and select my previous back-ups. I'd really like to manually restore things like iPhoto and iTunes. Can anyone help?

 

[chscag]

You can't scroll back. Since you wiped your drive and reinstalled, the only thing you have now from Time Machine is the current full backup which you made. However, you should be able to restore your photos and music (iPhoto and iTunes) from that backup.

 

[aquilla321]

Oh I see - I was just assuming that it was ok as it was still the same computer. Well it's good to know that I can restore photos and music. Thanks for your help. I think I've got it worked out now...

 

[Sawday]

OP - surely your Time machine backups were on your external drive not your internal hard drive. If you didn't wipe your external drive they should still be there.