Time Machine restore question, Need help!

[cdown16]

BACKGROUND:
I am actually on my third iMac in one month (I have upgraded all the way to a 24" now). I have three folders on my time machine drive which is hooked to a 1TB external HD and respectively named iMac1, iMac2, iMac3, with iMac3 being the newest 24" folder. I just did a restore from a Time Machine backup on my brand new 24" at the start of OS X setup so I could have all my settings, programs, etc. be the same...the problem is, the restore that it implemented was from July 9, not the 21st so some things have changed.

PROBLEM:
Time machine will not read my older backups (so I can go back to a few hours ago and restore) because they are all in folder iMac2. I tried copying iMac2 to iMac3 (the newest folder), and it will not let me move files.

WHAT I NEED ANSWERED:
Long story short, I just want to move the files from my two older machines (iMac1 and iMac2) into the iMac3 folder to make them accessible to restore too.

Thanks for everyone's quick responses!

 

[-tWv-]

You will probably need to just drag the files you need from those backups manually. I don't think there is a way to combine your backup folders. You don't want to mess up the latest backup folder by adding things that don't belong in there.
This is an apple support thread I found trying to do pretty much the same thing as you want to. Read what the second post has to say and that should answer your question.

 

[cdown16]

You cannot just copy manually, I tried that. Nothing can be copied, cut, pasted for moved from the backup folders.

I cannot mess anything up due to not having time machine hooked up at the moment so it cannot do a new backup. The only backup on there is the one I restored to from July 9th.