accessing time capsule backup data on different computer

[TarkinDale]

Hey people,

I made the mistake of doing someone a favour and am stuck trying to get data off of a roach infested time capsule. I have a Mac connected to it by Ethernet.
if on my Mac I go to browse other backup disks, I can see two backup disk from the capsule. When I connect to the capsule through finder/networks. I can see the sparse bundles after a bit of time goes by.
what I don’t want to do while getting the data is:

• accidentally backup my computer over the existing backups in the time capsule.
• Restore over the top of my computer

How do I safely get the contents of the backups off the time capsule?

cheers,

 

[Brian33]

Here's what I would do:
1. Ensure that I had Time Machine on my Mac turned OFF.
2. Connect the Time Capsule
3. Use Finder get to the files I wanted, and (still using Finder), copy them (drag and drop) to whatever destination folder I wanted.

I wouldn't bother with the Time Machine interface in this case. To get the files, use Finder to to go the TC and see the '.sparsebundle' packages. Just double-click on the sparse bundle. IIRC, next you'll see a machine name, dbl-click it and you'll see volume names, dbl-click one of those and you'll see the snapshot date/time folders. Pick one of them and it will look just as the volume's filesystem did on that date/time.

The only thing changed on your computer will be whatever folder you drop the copied files into, and the data on the TC will be preserved.