Help with a .sparsebundle file

[brsboarder]

So,
I had an old time machine when I had an old macbook pro which died and I found a 200gb sparsebundle file on it. I have just realized (1 year later) that my new macbook air doesn't have all my old photos on it. I'm wondering if they can be in the sparsebundle file, but I don't know how to browse it. When I click time machine it asks me if I want to open a previous disk and I'm afraid something somehow can get deleted. Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[gr8tfly]

You should be able to use Time Machine's "Browse Other Time Machine Disks" to access the backup. Even if you accidentally told TM to use that drive for a backup, it wouldn't delete what's there.

 

[dakwar]

First, select your .sparsebundle file, do File > Get Info, and make sure that under "Sharing & Permissions:" every Name listed has only "Read only" Privilege. This way you can be pretty sure that unless you delete the whole .sparsebundle file, that you won't accidentally delete individual files within it.

Once your .sparsebundle is Read Only, double-click it. This will mount the .sparsebundle for you. You can then browse to it and through it using your Finder, find your pictures and copy them to your new computer's hard drive.