# Unlocking a picture on my backup drive
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unlocking-a-picture-on-my-backup-drive/943313
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 31, 2021, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unlocking-a-picture-on-my-backup-drive/943313 "2021-05-31T21:13:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2021, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unlocking-a-picture-on-my-backup-drive/943313/1 "2021-05-31T21:13:28Z")
For some reason, there are a number of things that were not successfully moved when my last MacBook Pro wouldn’t boot and I got a new one. I would very much like to save a photo that is stored on my backup drive. It opens in Preview, but when I try to export it it says I don’t have permission. A box says ‘To change permission, go to Get Info.’ I did that, and I see that the username that is allowed to read and write is my name [first, middle initial, last]. I’m not sure where to find my username on this computer, but it may be Firstname Lastname.
How can I give myself permission to save/export things from my backup drive?
(NB: I was able to email the picture to myself, and save it from the email.)
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### Author:  [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2021, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unlocking-a-picture-on-my-backup-drive/943313/2 "2021-06-01T00:15:23Z")
In the future, one way to fix that is to simply give yourself permission to access the image.
Rather than try to figure out the password for some old user, as an admin, you can simply hit the ‘+’ sign, add yourself, and give yourself read and write permissions.
This will work 99.99% of the time, There are a few files that are protected by lower-level security that you can’t do this to, but those are rare for non-geeks.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2021, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unlocking-a-picture-on-my-backup-drive/943313/3 "2021-06-01T00:33:04Z")
I created another Admin account. I’m having a bad day, so I’ll try to access the image another time.
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2021, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unlocking-a-picture-on-my-backup-drive/943313/4 "2021-06-01T01:20:48Z")
When you refer to your “backup drive”, are you referring to a Time Machine backup or a backup drive onto which you have cloned your primary drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or Retrospect or SuperDuper (etc)?
If the latter, and it is the backup of your _previous_ computer, first do a Get Info on the entire drive. Find the checkbox that says ‘Ignore Permissions on this drive’ and check it. Now the OS should no longer impose any concerns about file ownership of any file on that drive.
You should now be able to drill directly down to the file and simply drag it to your own desktop (or any location you prefer) to make a copy.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2021, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unlocking-a-picture-on-my-backup-drive/943313/5 "2021-06-01T01:26:28Z")
> [@AHunter3](#):
>
> Time Machine backup
Time machine backup on an external drive.
This would be a lot simpler if they’d copied all of my files. Then I’d just have them on this computer.
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### Author:  [@Hatchie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hatchie)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2021, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unlocking-a-picture-on-my-backup-drive/943313/6 "2021-06-01T03:36:38Z")
An all-else-fails strategy is to open it in Preview and take a screenshot of it, then save that. It may not have the full resolution of the original though.
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### Author:  [@Cleophus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cleophus)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2021, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unlocking-a-picture-on-my-backup-drive/943313/7 "2021-06-02T06:59:01Z")
The correct way to do this is to connect the backup drive and either resume its use as a Time Machine backup destination and browse through the backup history as usual, or Option-click on the Time Machine icon in the status bar and use the “Browse Other Backup Disks” option. The permissions on the backup drive are based on the user account from the existing machine. By design, Time Machine sets restrictive permissions on backup disks to prevent system users from accessing other user’s backups.
Here is a Apple support article describing this, the info about browsing other backups is at the bottom: [Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250)
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2021, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unlocking-a-picture-on-my-backup-drive/943313/8 "2021-06-02T13:32:16Z")
> [@Cleophus](#):
>
> The correct way to do this is to connect the backup drive and either resume its use as a Time Machine backup destination and browse through the backup history as usual, or Option-click on the Time Machine icon in the status bar and use the “Browse Other Backup Disks” option. The permissions on the backup drive are based on the user account from the existing machine.
_copies to Info folder_
Useful info. I’m not a Time Machine user but sooner or later I’m going to be attempting to help someone who is.