For Time machine backups, Do you need ALL the backups?

[osity]

I'm trying to recover a time machine backup. The customer said he just needed the last 2 backups. I got the last two and he said it looked kind of small and it ended up not working.
There are others older backups located in his backup folder.

Do all the backups need to be recovered for a mac time machineto be able to use them?

[DataMedics]

I hope you're charging extra for that. Time Machine backup recoveries are a mess and will take forever. I keep hoping Ace will eventually support recovering out just the latest set, but so far no one really does. That's why I charge an entire extra recovery for extracting files from TimeBackup.

Each folder you see inside the backup set is just an incremental backup, meaning it only contains new files and modified files from that backup session. To get all the data you'd have to do a full recovery of all the folders but that might end up recovering 50Tb from a 3Tb drive because you'll be extracting every different version of every file ever modified.

The other, more practical method, is to get as clean a clone as possible and hope to fix it up enough to get it to mount on an Apple computer. Then you can just do a copy of the full backup folder onto another drive. Usually it's best to do that first before putting any other data on the destination drive since it may have to format the drive to move the backup set properly.

As a last resort, MacDrive for Windows does support a virtual folder of the full set of latest backup files. I've used that in the past to copy just the latest version of the files, however, lately it's been having problems keeping up with changes Apple has been making to their filesystem. Not to mention it doesn't support FileVault or APFS.

[osity]

strange...i also thought it was incremental but i had my employee call Apple to verify and they told them it wasn't.
Although he likely got a noob apple guy that doesn't know much....

Judging by the size of each folder... it looks incremental to me.... I will have to poke some more..

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Well,
Not All Are Informed Whats What ,Thanks Jared For This Explanation Not Got a Apple Time Backup Machine Yet .If i Get it I Will Send To You You Enjog The 50TB Extractions Man

[DataMedics]

Source of the post Apple to verify and they told them it wasn't.
Although he likely got a noob apple guy that doesn't know much....

Apple will tell you that because when you look at a time backup on a Mac it has a virtual folder called "latest backup" which doesn't really exist. From that virtual folder you could actually copy out just the latest copy of everything, but that's only if you can get the drive to a point where you can mount it on a Mac computer. I've often used DiskWarrior to try and fix things up enough so that's possible on my clone.

But, if you've got to copy the folders out using data recovery software such as DE, R-Studio, etc. the folders are only incremental and don't contain a full set in any of them past the original backup.

[osity]

yeah I see that virtual folder there on my end its called "latest" and has no size...