Time Machine backup organization

Your diagnosis that the restoration was done incorrectly sounds good to me (evidence is the dramatic increase in the file size as well as lots of duplicate photos). I have not been able to follow your suggested procedure because I don't know how to select a particular "time period" as the reference point for the restoration process. Can you clarify how that is done? And should I expect that a properly done restoration will indeed include my albums as they were organized on the reference date?

Once you have the Time Machine window open, you will see a list of dates on the right hand side of the window.
At the bottom of the screen you see, from left to right, Cancel, The date you are looking at, Restore.
Above Restore are two arrows. Up and Down (forwards and backwards)
Click the Up arrow once and you see the the screen image scroll backwards in time. The date changes.
Keep going until you get to a date that you know that everything was correct.
Click on the iPhoto library, just once, and then click Restore.
That's all there is to it.
Follow my first instructions before you launch Time Machine.

Thank you MrMacFixIt, your instructions worked perfectly. Virtually all of our 11,200 photos were restored from the backup on Time Machine with no duplication and with both thumbnails and full photo images. Final question re that procedure: can the IPhoto Library icon that I previously moved to the desktop now be trashed?

The icon on the desktop should the called iPhoto Library.
If it is, you can now put it in the trash.
Delete the trash as required.

To be honest with you, the drive that you are using for your Time Machine backups is not even close to being big enough.

You would be better off looking at something like the Seagate 1TB USB hard drive which retail for just around $100, if not cheaper.

There is a way to make Time Machine start over, I'll get back to you with the answer shortly.

Meanwhile, the Time Machine method of backup works very well indeed and is only limited by the amount of storage space you have available to store the backup.
This applies no matter what method of backup you use.

P

to make the TM backup start over again is to erase the disk using Disk Utility.
That will force TM to look at the drive as a new one and offer to back up to it.

tks for your answer...