Retrieve IMessages from LaCie external hard drive

[JustJoseph]

I have an anniversary coming up and would like to retrieve old stored iMessages for a gift. Question is the iMessages are stored on a LaCie hard drive and they are from three years ago, from her MacBook Pro which is retired. How to find the actual iMessages in the drive? Download them to a memory stick? Or place in a file? Find the love notes and create the book is the easy part. Any assistance would be appreciated!

 

[Ember1205]

Hi, and welcome.

iMessage data is stored on disk in ~/Library/Messages/

The messages themselves are stored as part of a database in that directory while items attached to various conversations are stored under the Attachments subdirectory within that directory. You may need to back up your entire current data then restore the old data to your production location (you might want to make a new user specifically to restore the data to) and you can hopefully go from there.

 

[chscag]

Actually the iMessages data bases are stored in your hidden user library here:

Macintosh HD/Users/your user name/Library/Messages/

 

[Rod]

When you mention a LaCie hard drive are you saying it has a Time Machine backup on it? Or have you used some other form of backup eg Intego or LaCie Backup software.

 

[Ember1205]

Actually the iMessages data bases are stored in your hidden user library here:

Macintosh HD/Users/your user name/Library/Messages/

Thanks for adding clarity, but for the "uninitiated", "~" translates to HD/Users/<your username>, so the path you listed is the same as what I had, only more explicitly detailed.

 

[MacInWin]

Ember1205, that's true, but when you aren't looking at the boot drive, the "~" doesn't translate, so if the OP, for example, selected the external drive and then used Finder to go to "~/Library/Messages" he'd end up on the boot drive, but if he uses chscag's longer version on that external drive, he'll end up in that backup directory. It's a nit-pick, but sort of important.

 

[Ember1205]

Ember1205, that's true, but when you aren't looking at the boot drive, the "~" doesn't translate, so if the OP, for example, selected the external drive and then used Finder to go to "~/Library/Messages" he'd end up on the boot drive, but if he uses chscag's longer version on that external drive, he'll end up in that backup directory. It's a nit-pick, but sort of important.

"~" ALWAYS translates. It's a soft link to the user's home directory. It forces you to "look" at wherever the home directory is defined.

My comment about using the tilde was to indicate that, on a functioning system, the location where data for iMessages is stored is in the path that I specified. There's no way to know for certain where that specific directory was backed up to, so I could not comment on that. For the purposes of -importing- that data into a system, the path I provided is the required one.

 

[MacInWin]

True, but the OP was asking where on the external backup drive the OLD messages would be found. So translating the "~" would lead him to his CURRENT system drive, not the external LaCie backup drive from the old Mac. What chscag gave was the path on that external drive to find the old messages the OP wanted. At least that's how I interpreted the sequence of posts. To import you don't need to know where they GO, but you do need to know where they COME FROM. So the OP needs to have the full path on the old drive to find the messages. Then he can import them to Messages (either with a new user or not) and from there print them out or do whatever he wants.

For the OP, use the full path as chscag gave you on the LaCie and you should find the old messages. I take the recommendation to form a new user to import them because I don't know how Messages is going to handle old messages into your current account.

 

[Ember1205]

True, but the OP was asking where on the external backup drive the OLD messages would be found. So translating the "~" would lead him to his CURRENT system drive, not the external LaCie backup drive from the old Mac. What chscag gave was the path on that external drive to find the old messages the OP wanted. At least that's how I interpreted the sequence of posts. To import you don't need to know where they GO, but you do need to know where they COME FROM. So the OP needs to have the full path on the old drive to find the messages. Then he can import them to Messages (either with a new user or not) and from there print them out or do whatever he wants.

For the OP, use the full path as chscag gave you on the LaCie and you should find the old messages. I take the recommendation to form a new user to import them because I don't know how Messages is going to handle old messages into your current account.

Ok, valid point.

Based on how I would approach this, I would disagree with that piece. I would move the files that are in the operational location to somewhere else, copy in the backup files, and then start the app. I don't know that you can "import" something that was not previously "exported". So, if this is literally just coming off of the backup disk that had a copy of the running configuration and data, you wouldn't be able to actually import anything. Plus, I'm not aware of an import/export function for iMessages.

Additionally, I wouldn't want the "old" data to be imported into and mixed with my current data.

 

[MacInWin]

True, I did a quick experiment and went to a backup copy of my messages. I right-clicked on one, then "Open with" and Messages was the first choice. At that point I stopped because I didn't know what it was going to do, but it did know that the file required Messages.

Similarly, I don't know what Messages would do using your method. Would it resend the messages? Is there some flag somewhere that triggers that?

Here is what I would do:

Make a complete backup of everything, because...

Now disconnect from everything, no internet, no wifi, no bluetooth. You want to be isolated.

Stop Messages app.

Then do what you recommended, move away the current files so somewhere else and replace them with the old ones. Restart Messages. See if Messages now has the old messages, find the ones you want, do whatever you want, then stop Messages, get rid of the old files and put the original files back. Now restart Messages and see if Messages has the new messages in place like before.

If so, I'd now reboot and let internet, wifi, bt and whatever connections reconnect again.

And test Messages just to make sure you didn't mess up anything.

If all looks good, well done. If all isn't well, restore everything from the backup.

 

[pm-r]

I wonder if the OP is still reading along and I'm wondering how they are going to use them… hmmmm…???