HELP! Restoring Time Machine Backups in TIGER

[Bluefusion]

Just as it says... I've decided to return to Tiger after Leopard's almost-insistence on consistently letting me down (Airport dropout every 30 seconds, poor decisions regarding Stacks and Finder view behavior, various tiny bugs and idiocies). Amazingly (and as I expected, somehow...) upgrading an install of Tiger up to 10.4.9 (the version before people started reporting the 'airport bug') gives the same computer, in the same room, on the same network a suddenly-flawless wireless connection-- as well as fixing most of my annoyances with Leopard simply by not being Leopard (sad, but true). That said, I've got one big problem...

Time Machine backed up my files, since naturally I used it. I knew that Time Machine's work was accessible in the Finder, and figured hey--no big deal, I can just drag the things I want to put back. It doesn't seem to work that way, though, because everything is an alias to (apparently) things in an invisible folder. All I need to be able to do is copy various folders back to the internal drive-- I don't need or want a full restore.

Is it just a matter of getting these aliases resolved (ie. making the folder visible), or is there a better way of getting at my files?

 

[gr8tfly]

I believe it's the hard-linked directories Tiger's having trouble with. That's new to Leopard. Sounds like you will need to be booted off Leopard, then copy what you need from the Time Machine drive.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Just as it says... I've decided to return to Tiger after Leopard's almost-insistence on consistently letting me down (Airport dropout every 30 seconds, poor decisions regarding Stacks and Finder view behavior, various tiny bugs and idiocies). Amazingly (and as I expected, somehow...) upgrading an install of Tiger up to 10.4.9 (the version before people started reporting the 'airport bug') gives the same computer, in the same room, on the same network a suddenly-flawless wireless connection-- as well as fixing most of my annoyances with Leopard simply by not being Leopard (sad, but true). That said, I've got one big problem...

Time Machine backed up my files, since naturally I used it. I knew that Time Machine's work was accessible in the Finder, and figured hey--no big deal, I can just drag the things I want to put back. It doesn't seem to work that way, though, because everything is an alias to (apparently) things in an invisible folder. All I need to be able to do is copy various folders back to the internal drive-- I don't need or want a full restore.

Is it just a matter of getting these aliases resolved (ie. making the folder visible), or is there a better way of getting at my files?

you have to reinstall leopard, and then restore from the time machine back up, and then move everything you want to an external drive that tiger can read, then reinstall tiger, then drag everything from that drive to your machine. Then run a million updates. Or, you could wait until the next update for leopard and hop everything is sorted out.

 

[gr8tfly]

you have to reinstall leopard, and then restore from the time machine back up, and then move everything you want to an external drive that tiger can read, then reinstall tiger, then drag everything from that drive to your machine. Then run a million updates. Or, you could wait until the next update for leopard and hop everything is sorted out.

Another thought would be to boot off the Leopard DVD and do a complete system restore from Time Machine (assuming system files were backed up). Might be faster than a separate, new install.

 

[Bluefusion]

Fixed. Easiest way:

Load Tiger onto a drive.
Load Leopard onto a drive. In my case, same drive as TM (with TM disabled for the new install)
- Navigate to /Latest
- Copy the entire contents of this folder to the root level of the drive.

You'll need some HD space, but this way all hard links are broken and you never need Leopard installed again. Tiger can read anything in the new archive just fine.