Time Machine - Where are my old files?

[scottshackleton]

Hey

So I have an external HD 500 GB and I had some data on it prior to getting my macbook pro. I finally hooked it up and set up time machine to do manual backups when I please. So I have done a couple of time machine backups of all the data on my machine, but when I went searching for some old stuff off of the HD that I never had on my mac, it seems to have been erased.

When I connect the HD, first of all, the old icon that used to show up is now replaces with a "timemachine backups" icon/label. I am guessing that it because it is now associated with time machine.

Also, the only files in there stem from an initial backups option and they lead to the different dates I backed up.

Is my old stuff gone? Or is it somewhere I cannot seem to locate?

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[No1nfoProvided]

When I open the mounted drive the first think I see is "Backups.backupdb." If you go from there: "Backups.backupdb" -> username -> date. I see all of my backups from there, even if they were from before I reformatted my Mac. Some of em are locked, but with admin privileges, you can unlock and access them to take data from. I'm not sure I answered your question, but hopefully this helped.

EDIT: ok, you can ignore all of the stuff above. I understand now that you had stuff prior to making that HDD a backup after rereading your post. Did Time Machine format the drive before using it? I only used my hard drive as a Time Machine backup and was formatted to be empty so I can't really help on this occassion. Sorry about that.