My teenage daughter's Mac Mini (running OSX 10.8) was cluttered with all sorts of stuff, even unwanted and inappropriate popup windows when using Safari, and more. So I made a final TM backup. Then I did a clean install of Mavericks.
Now, I wanted to bring back individual files and folders from that TM backup, BUT…
- going to Migration Assistant, I realized that it would overwrite the clean install and bring back the clutter. This is no option.
- going to TM, I realized I wasn't able to select any of the snapshots from the timeline
- going to the external drive containing the TM backup with Finder, all folders within her "old" user-folder showed a small red stop-sign, which I learned is an issue with permissions. I wasn't able to restore manually.
What to do now?
I know I could restore the cluttered state and copy folders and files manually to an external drive, make another clean install of Mavericks, then copy manually from that external drive. This seems a lot of time and work to me.
Is there an easier way?
Best Answer
This is probably the easiest way to go.
You can fix the "red stop-sign" issue by opening Terminal and entering:
sudo diskutil disableOwnership /Volumes/[Your TM Drive].You'll then be able to copy the files over manually, without having to worry about permissions.