Ok clicked on the TM drive and went back into the day before drive failed, when I got to the "Pictures" folder and clicked on it I get this
"The folder “Pictures” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents."

Get Info on that folder and see what the permissions are. You might have to give yourself Read/Write permission.

Thanks Michael

I don't know why your permissions are so fubar. Did you ever add or delete any users?

If Michael's suggestion doesn't work we'll need to set the drive to ignore ownership. In Leopard and lower there was a checkbox in the Get Info, but Snow Leopeard is protecting us from ourselves.

Launch Terminal, then type the following below ([space] = a space)

sudo[space]vsdbutil[space]-d[space]

then drop your TM hard drive on the Terminal window, it should then read "sudo vsdbutil -d /Volumes/Name of your HD," then hit Return. It will ask for a password.

To set it back change the -d to a -a. Running TM should change it back too.

Once you get everything rebuilt, sometime down the road I'd wipe the TM drive and start over, there is some kind of corruption, possibly due to your HD failing.

ok, at work right now, but maybe can try this tonight...

So will this terminal process, do another restore from TM to my imac or just give me access to those pics?

Now I CAN access TM backups made after the new HD was installed in my iMac.

So.....
HD in iMac "died" 4/23/11.
New HD in iMac 4/27/11.
First new TM backup 4/28/11.
I can access 4/28/11 back ups forward.
4/23/11 backup and previous give me folders with a little (-) in the lower right corner of the folder and wont give me permission to open them.

Just wanted to be clear.....

And you kept the same username as you had before the HD replacement? This is odd if you did...

changed nothing, just turned on iMac, with TM drive hooked up and restored from TM drive...most stuff went over perfectly, it just seems to be a few events of pics

The Terminal thing will change permissions of the TM drive. If all you need is the pics you should be able to access them now.

Turn off TM temporarily as the next time it runs it will change the permissions back.

I'm wondering what else may not have come over correctly that you don't know about yet. You might want to do the Terminal thing, then immediately reboot from the install DVD and try another full restore.

After the restore, when you reboot repair permissions right away.

Thanks again Reboot, I'm hoping to do this when I get home today..

So I open Terminal and type

1. sudo[space]vsdbutil[space]-d[space]

2. Then drop TM HD in Terminal Window

3. type in iMac password

4. ???


Should I shut off TM first? in Sys Prefs, before I start any of this?

Yes.