Brand new iMac, Can I restore from Time machine or start new?

My Mac Pro died a month ago so I am replacing it with a 27 Inch iMac. I had a time machine back up on my Mac Pro. When I get my iMac can I restore from the time machine so that I don't have to go through installing all of my programs again or should I start fresh and install everything fr

It's probably "better" to put a fresh install of everything but it certainly isn't the easiest or fastest. I'd say if everythg was running fine at the time of your last TM backup I'd restore from the TM probably using Migration Assistant. Installing and registering a bunch of software can be a pain. I've always used Migration Assistant when I get a new Mac. What happened to the Mac Pro? Is the hard drive still available? You could stick it into an external enclosure and migrate from that.

Similar Messages

Had to install a new hard drive early 2008 iMac, now can't restore from Time Machine.

Had to install a new hard drive in a early 2008 iMac, now can't restore from Time Machine. Backups show in Time Machine but I can't select them.
Serial Number QP*****1LW
<Edited by Host>

Here are some notes on Time Machine problems.
http://pondini.org/TM/
Troubleshooting.html
I have asked the hosts that your serial number be removed. Best not to publish it,

Renamed multiple files iTunes Match. Can I restore from time machine?

Hi
Hopefully someone might be able to assist.
I downloaded a live album from a bands official store on their website.
After importing into my itunes library, I tried to rename the two discs so that they appeared as one album, (I've done this lots of times before).
Stupidly, I was rushing before I had to leave the house, was unaware that is actually selected 50 albums and accidently renamed a large number of files as one album!!!
It's made slightly more complicate because I have iTunes Match and they were all stored in the cloud.
Can I restore from time machine and manually update iTunes Match?
Amy help would be appreciated
Thanks

when i say right clicking, i mean in itunes, right clicking the song and going get info and then changing the properties via the info tab.
yehh i done the grouping tracks together by holding down the command key.
but because i have some smart playlists with the same songs in, i changed both the genre and grouping not realising, this was ok for one smart playlist but totally messed the other up, especially because in for example "dance classics" smart playlist, there also in a folder on my hdd, . and thats the playlist i messed up., but if i drag the folder back into itunes, there all over the show on itunes and in the other playlist too, hence why it isnt as easy to easilly sort and rectify.
so what id like to do is just copy the folder again from my time machine backup, replacing the files but im unsure if this would solve it.
Message was edited by: Ian-K

Imac won't restore from time machine backup after HD (hard drive) recall replacement

I have an imac bought in 2011, running Snow Leopard. It required an HD replacement due to the 1 TB Seagate recall - the replacement was done by a certified Apple repair station yesterday. Before the guy left he started a backup/restore from my latest time machine backup set. It failed. I attempted it two times and got error messages that it failed and the computer needed to be restarted to try it again. No luck. I called the guy back and he told me to call Apple Care. Not thrilled about that response since the guy had just left my house I did what he told me to do. (A quick sideline here: I recognize that a time machine backup should be no big deal and SHOULD work everytime, but it doesn't. It irks me that Apple is replacing my HD through no fault of mine and yet they don't allow the restore of data to be a "covered" expense in this process - this isn't just because this was an authorized repair guy - the Apple store would have done the same).
Back to the issue. When I called apple care they pretty much had me try the same thing again with an earlier back up set. To my knowledge, it didn't work. I say this because it looked like it was working and when I came back to the imac later, it had restarted and once again booted to the OSX install. (The boot disc is still in the imac). When I tried to boot from another location, one did not show up to boot from so I assumed that the data didn't transfer and it forced another restart. So, I tried something else. I tried to re-install the snow leopard OSX without using the restore function. That appeared to work and then when the machine restarted it asked if I had another mac and I chose the option to get the files/apps/etc. from my time machine backup. The computer chose what I can only assume is the most recent backup set (It chose what I know to be a subfolder that appears under the dated backup folder - Macintosh HD--which btw is confusing seeing as that's always the name of the HD on the imac). I again stepped away from the computer so it could do its thing for two hours. When I returned, I was back to the MAC OSX screen that asks you to choose a language. There were no more options to choose DISK UTILITY or RESTORE FROM BACKUP, etc. When I clicked on English it took me right back into the screen where you say whether you have another Apple that you want to transfer data from. I realized that the imac must have restarted and I assumed maybe it was because the boot disk was still in - except how do you get the disc to eject? I also initially assumed that the backup had somehow failed again and triggered a restart. I tried to choose the option to just set up the machine without transferring data and when I got to the choose a name for your HOME folder message I tried to enter the same name I had it as before and it wouldn't allow me to do so, saying that that name was already in use. I also tried a different name and that didn't work either - got the same message (I assume if it is not the same name that it won't sync up with the time machine data from the backup set). So, I almost tried the "select time machine backup" option again until I looked at my HD space. Clearly, there is space that has been used. HD space was 997 at the start and now it's 636. My initial thought is to somehow get back into the setup area where I can use disc utility and erase the whole thing and then start over but 1) I don't think it's going to work even if I could get back there 2) I have no idea how to get this thing to reboot into that mode 3) I can't get the boot CD out to even try to restart to see if this thing did what it was supposed to, SO NOW I AM TOTALLY STUCK! I have not called Apple Care back because quite frankly they were useless the first time. I have a call into the repair guy but who knows how much help he will be. In the mean time, I have a million things to do and a computer that isn't working - Whoever said Apples never have issues needs to be seriously censored!
A few other notes: I use Time Machine Editor to run my backups weekly. It was set up that way from the get go by an Apple rep who came to my house to get us up and running. Editor should not effect the way that time machine does its work, so I doubt there is relevance but thought it worth mentioning.
One other note is that the Apple Care agent tried to have me do something called a "Source" something or other from the disk utility screen but when she realized that my backup file (shown by date) contained many other sub files (11-27-12/MacintoshHD/MyNamesIMAC/etc.), it was not possible to run this operation - thus we aborted. Sorry I don't remember the name of the process and unfortunately now can't access that option to go find it.
If you can help me, I would be eternally grateful! I am open to having a phone conversation if you are willing to give me your email to mail you my number. I have so much work to do this week and this was the last thing I needed. Did I mention this was supposed to be EASY?
I used to be quite the geek with my PC - still on the learning curve with the mac but not enjoying it. I am fairly tech savvy and I can follow instructions for a step by step solution if you've got one.

I got a recall and had the drive replaced. I have retored 3 timesa dn even had apple do the job and it is still not right. I still can't get a simple ghost of the data from time machineback tot he new drive.
This is Apple's explaination as taken from their web page.:
Restoring your entire system from a backup
If you are restoring a backup made by a Mac to the same Mac
With your backup drive connected, start up your Mac from the Recovery system (Command-R at startup) or Mac OS X v10.6 installation disc. Then use the "Restore From Time Machine Backup" utility.
Note: If "You can't restore this backup because it was created by a different model of Mac" appears when restoring a backup that was made on a different Mac, follow the onscreen instructions.
I even posted this information on the community and apple removed it... because they don't like the:
Off-topic or non-technical posts
Non-constructive rants or complaints
But here is my experieince:
Take in 27iMac running 10.6.8, 5-7 days, what a joke, my boss will be happy to pay for a week without working. Finally get, "if you have TM back up, 3 days." Get machine back with 10.6.3, hit the R recovery, click TM back up, runs for 2 hours, reboots, looks great. Box up take back to office... update to install - OH NO, still running 10.6.3. Updates crash with no specific error on install, BUG PROBELM, nothing runs.
Call Apple... after hours, tells me to boot using 10.6.2 disk, wipe, reinstall OS, udate to 10.6.8, THEN do the restore. GREAT! Only thing 10.6.2 DVD won't read... now back on phone... take back to the store, Genius says, he'll ix it just like it was. PROMISES it'll be fixed.
Pick up next day, supposedly, booted to disk, wiped drive, reinstalled, updated to 10.6.8 and THEN did the RIGHT restore... Looks GREAT... apps run and 10.6.8 OS. Back to the office... NOT RUNNING right!!!... fonts messed up, drop box app needs new install, cocktail needs upgrade, Fetch not working, memorized paths gone... back ups locked out of permissions... ***!!
4 hours on phone with apple and still no rsolution - to missing "settings". Seems there are THREE WAYS TO RESTORE (according to apply tech)... Running MIGRATE ASSISTANT and being able to choose your files, including settings, "R" RESTORE after they load a new OS... or NOW WAITING for them to send me a bootable 10.6.3 disk and then boot from disk, w/o installing OS and doing a restore from TM. I think this is done via the disk Utilties application.
So now can't back up without doing a full 400 GB back up since permissons are screwed and possibly destroying any good back ups... can't work, like having hands tied behind back. WAITING for solution! Very upset!!!
I did my first restore just like they said and now an 10 days without proper machine. Just FYI. I thnk I am going to make the store do the tech work so I have somthing to fall back on.

Lost mail rules when upgrading to ML, can't restore from time machine

Hi,
I've installed mountain lion and restored from time machine and mail rules were not there. There's only news from apple.
I tried to restore the rules myself (MessageRules.plist and MessageRules.plist.backup) but when opening mail rules were not there yet. Nevertheless, i can add rules manually, so if there was a way of looking at the past rules I could just copy them (though it's not the best way).

My rules are still there, so perhaps Apple support speak with resource forked tongue.
Comparing an old (pre ML) rules file from 20th June with the ML one, the differences are:
The file name was: MessageRules.plist, the ML one is SynchedRules.plist. Both are in my V2 folder, but the old Rules have been copied (by Mail, not me) into the new SynchedRules file.
In the old file, for each item (Rule) the first line was Active (Key) String (Type) 1 (Value). In the ML file, this line is no longer there, so the first line is AllCriteriaMustBeSatisfied.
You can see these differnces in the "preview" part of Finder Show Info, if you have the two files to compare.
Thus, just copying and renaming the old Rules file probably won't work, because of this difference. Mail probably just makes a new file because the copied file isn't as expected. It should be possible to edit the old plist file to remove the "Active" line, and rename it to SynchedRules.plist (but see below). The top is slightly different, just below <dict>, as this relates to the Active line. There are a couple of lines at the bottom that aren't in the new file.
The "Active" line that has gone is now in a file called RulesActiveState.plist. This file is just a list of RuleIds from the SynchedRules.plist (like this:
AC6F6611-FF61-4AA6-9682-BA100EFAC233)
Doing this does sound rather tedious, but might be quicker than manually re-entering blocked email addresses etc. to replicate old rules. As plist files are in xml format, it should be possible to use a text editor to delete the unwanted "Active" line from the message rules list by Find & Replace All (with nothing). All this could then be copied to the "SynchedRules.plist. You would need to copy the RuleIds into the RulesActiveState.plist as well.
Make a copy of the files first just in case...

Can't restore from Time Machine backup error message

My hard drive on my Macbook failed a few days ago. Just makes a clanking noise and won't boot up etc... I installed a new drive, formatted it, and selected restore from Time Machine backup from the installer screen. It started restoring from my backup I had on an external drive and everything was fine untill it got about 6% done then get a message that says "An error occured when restoring from the backup" It is pretty non descriptive. It also says please restart your system and try again or something to that effect. I tried again, same problem. When I try to copy files over manually I eventually gets some error that says there is a problem with a file and it will quit. Any ideas on how to get my data? I can see all my files on there, but can't get them. My backup disc is just used for backup on this one machine nothing else, so it shouldn't have a problem. Help!

Good to hear MA is doing something!
>I have never had much luck with Time Machine...
Same here, not one good backup or restore, can't tell which.
You can set any of these to Clone/Update as often as you wish...
Carbon copy cloner...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/products/tribackup.html

Can't restore from time machine after SSD upgrade

Macbook Pro 13" mid-2009, 10.7.5 Lion
I just swapped out my 160GB HDD with a 250GB SSD on my MBP. When I booted up, I pressed Command-R to try to get into recovery mode but all it does was showing a gray folder with a question mark on it.
I had previously backed up my HDD with time machine. My original HDD is no longer available because I tried to upgrade to Mavericks (since the command-R was not working) and upon restarting my MBP was locked with system pin code (that is another nightmare all by itself)
What are my options besides getting a 10.7 Lion CD from the apple store and try to boot it up that way? and then restore from time machine?
Any other way I can get into receovery mode?
Thanks (My MBP is now a brick sitting on my desk)

It's a bare drive so it isn't formatted and it doesn't yet have a Recovery HD installed on it.
Your computer originally came with a version of Leopard installed. You can reinstall it if you still have the original discs that came with the computer. Or, if you have a retail Snow Leopard DVD you can reinstall Snow Leopard from which you can then upgrade to Mavericks (Lion is no longer available for re-download.) It's unlikely your local Apple Store has a Lion USB flash drive or DVD although you can certainly make an appointment and ask for their help.
You should see if you can boot from the Recovery HD invisible image in your Time Machine backup drive. Connect it to the computer and use OPTION boot to get the boot manager. If you see a Recovery HD on your backup drive displayed, then boot from it.

Can't restore from Time Machine using recovery partition

I came up with the idéa to put in an extra disk (SSD) into my mid 2009 13" Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion and create my own fusion drive.
In order to make sure not to lose all of my data I made sure to back up all my files using Time Machine so that simply could restore my entire system to the new drive.
Careful as one should be when about to wipe the entire drive on a computer I wanted to check so that I could make a proper restore from my TM backup disk. So I booted into recovery mode and choose to restore from Time Machine and then I selected my external drive, but then nothing. Where the list of my latest backups should be there was nothing.
I've tried to format the disk several times, changing disk permissions etc.
Does anyone have a clue what could solve this? Is it possible that it has something to do with the fact that I'm (probably) running 10.8.3 and that my recovery partition is 10.8.2?

Is the TM backup complete? When you Enter Time Machine, do you have snapshots going back in time?
See here for info on a problem Pondini has found with Time Machine that may have affected you:
UPDATED: Serious Time Machine bug on Mountain Lion (Updated)
You may just have to restart your TM backups to get those folders backed up.
If you do have that issue, please post at his link. He is trying to get enough background info to pass to Apple to solve the problem.

Going back to leopard from snow leopard Can I restore from Time machine

My Imac continues to lock up about three times a day since I went to Snow Leopard.
I want to go back to Leopard where I did not have these problems.
Can I reformat and do a clean install and then restore everything from time machine even though the back up is from Snow Leopard?

You can restore the system to any previous dated state shown in your Time Machine backups. However, this will not preserve anything you created after that date. You can also restore individual files & folders from later backups but you may or may not be able to use files you created using Snow Leopard while running Leopard, depending on the parent application & if it was updated to use a new file format with Snow Leopard.
It is generally much better to resolve the issues you have with Snow Leopard & continue using it than to try to do this. Most issues are fairly easy to resolve. If you want help with that, let us know.

Can't restore from Time Machine

I have an early 2011 17" MBP, the last model made, I think. I use the pegasus 12 TB thunderbolt setup with time machine to backup my files.
I've had no problems, all is well.
My computer has been slowing down since I installed Mountain Lion. It has reached the point of absurdity it is so slow now. I decided to do some looking around and figured I would do the following:
1) get a 6G SSD 480GB and put it in the main hard drive and keep the former hard drive with all its data as a separate external backup.
2) put in a new install of Mountain Lion. Reinstall all my programs: Aperuture 3, Photoshop CS6, pages, quicken, and so forth.
Sounds simple enough. Got my SSD drive this morning from OWC. Install was simple, went into internet recovery mode. It all worked great.
I did not want to just image back from TM all that I had because it was so slow. Seeing as I'm going to also put a second HD where the optical drive currently is, I wanted to install carefully on the SSD to maximize speed and space.
The reinstall of 10.8.x went well. Talk about zippy, wow. Got linked back up to iCloud, all the usual email, contacts, etc synced with the computer flawlessly.
So far, all is going well except for one minor deal. Major deal.
Time machine is recognized fine by the fresh install. I can open TM and see the Pegasus with all it's information. However, I cannot find but the image for "now." I cannot go back any further for some reason. I did change the name of my new hard drive, could that be an issue?
I cannot find my disk of Aperture 3. I had purchased Ap2 and kept upgrading with CD's through AP3. The AP3 I have is an upgrade disk and for whatever reason, I cannot seem to find any of my former Aperture disks. Simple enough, I thought, I'll just restore AP3 from Time Machine.
Same problem is happening: I can see Aperture 3 in TM. I highlight the app. The "restore" button is greyed out and I can only access the "now" image and cannot go further back on images/time.
Any idea why Time Machine is not working with restore? Why I cannot take all the last year of faithfully saving daily backups to time machine and see them?
I can't see them, restore them. Only the "now" image is visible and it will not let me restore anything. Anything. I tried various files, a single picture, and nothing is working. I am getting frustrated thinking that maybe this whole time machine as a backup is a joke.
Help?
Thanks.

DocDoc, that worked. I read that page and it meantioned how to exactly click what. I'm not sure why TM is so particular, but nevertheless, I was able to open a finder window pre-TM, click on my new hard drive. Then I opened TM and again, clicked on my hard drive in that finder window. Then navigated to the folder I wanted, which was the applications folder.
The "now" image wouldn't do anything when right clicked (on aperture.app) except offer to get info or to delete all backups of aperture. I almost gave up, figuring the purpled out timeline (as previous) on TM was bunk. I couldn't go backwards to a previous image before.
But having navigated that exact way somehow made TM happy. A previous image about 1 month ago was able to be saved to my application folder. 986megs or something like that in a few seconds. When TB works, it zips right along.
I don't care for how persnickety TM is, but am glad it worked nevertheless. Thanks for your help.

Upgraded HD in iMac can't resore from Time Machine

I upgraded the stock 320GB hard drive on my 24" 2007 iMac to a 2TB Hybrid drive and I can't restore from my Time Machine backup. It tries to restore then I get a log with information that says the restore cannot continue. I had Mavericks installed but booting up using my Snow Leopard disk. I can install Snow Leopard from scratch and it works fine. I also tried diffferent restore points to no avail. Any ideas? Also seems all the fans are running full blast.

I upgraded the stock 320GB hard drive on my 24" 2007 iMac to a 2TB Hybrid drive and I can't restore from my Time Machine backup. It tries to restore then I get a log with information that says the restore cannot continue. I had Mavericks installed but booting up using my Snow Leopard disk. I can install Snow Leopard from scratch and it works fine. I also tried diffferent restore points to no avail. Any ideas? Also seems all the fans are running full blast.

Can't restore from Time Machine "error occurred adding a recovery system"

Here's the situation:
MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard was upgraded to Mountain Lion 10.8.2.
A Time Machine backup exists (on Time Capsule) from the day before the upgrade.
I am trying to restore the Time Machine backup to a blank hard drive connected to the MacBook via FIrewire, but after rebooting with Command-R and selecting the backup source and HD destination I keep getting this (unhelpful) messages:
"An error occured while adding a recovery system to the destination disk" and "the recovery system could not be added"
Is what I am attempting impossible, or is there something else going on? What use is Time Machine if I can't restore?

Hi FranzKafka
I know it has been a while since your question, but the issue is possibly dependent on the blank HD, h=was it changed from the GUID partitioning? If so change back and you will find the Time Machine will restore back... without having to reinstall OSX. As you say, all of the original settings are captuered within TM.

Can't restore from Time Machine back ups

I began having problems with my 2 year old iMac which was not corrected with a re-install of Snow Leopard from the Installer disk.
I decided to restore my startup drive from a Time Machine backup. I followed the procedures. I selected the particular back up to restore from. Restore began and indicated that it would take about 2 hours and 40 minutes. When I came back to check 4 hours later, the progress bar was completely filled in but the text below it says:
"Restoring files (104.4%)
Time remaining: 1690214873 hours and 30 mins"
No progress seems to be going on. But if I just click the mouse I can hear my disks go into action and the numbers start changing on the time remaining for a few seconds and then everything stops.
I have repeated this experience twice now, each time using a different Time Machine backup.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
John

try repairing the TM drive with disk utility on the install DVD, any errors? also, reformat the internal drive using the partition tab in disk utility on the install DVD (don't use the erase tab). then try restoring again. if nothing helps then you'll have to erase the drive again and reinstall SL from scratch. then migrate from the TM backup manually. this is quite tedious but there is nothing else to do if the restore utility is not working.
see this link on what to restore in your home directory.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6185507
one correction to this link.
ical data is stored in ~/library/calendars.

Can't Restore from Time Machine Backup???

I was trying to revert my OS to Snow Leopard from Lion, and thus I backed up all my files first just in case something went wrong. I however forgot that you cannot restore a backup from a newer OS to an older one, so I redownloaded Lion to set things right and backup only my files. However, when I redownloaded Lion and I connected my externel hardrive and clicked on time machine, all the backups were in pink and when I clicked on them they were unresponsive. What happened and how do I fix this?

marcus221 wrote:
I redownloaded Lion to set things right and backup only my files. However, when I redownloaded Lion and I connected my externel hardrive and clicked on time machine, all the backups were in pink and when I clicked on them they were unresponsive. What happened and how do I fix this?
If your backups are on a network, it may take a few moments for the display to be "populated" and responsive.
What you see in the "Star Wars" display depends on how you got there. If you start from, say, your Documents folder, then that folder is all you'll see. If it wasn't included in your backups, you can't select them.
Select something else before going into the display, or select something else in the sidebar.
See #15A in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

ICloud sent emails disappeared and can't restore from Time Machine

I'm having a very weird problem with my iCloud email. Sometime between last Friday and Saturday, all the sent messages on iCloud disappeared. They disappeared from the webmail and from all my devices (Macbook, iMac, iPhone, iPad). All the other mailboxes on iCloud are still intact.
Since I have a Time Machine backup, I tried to restore the messages. I can see all the messages on Time Machine, and I can browse and open them individually but if I try to restore them, nothing apparently happens (a dialog box saying "Restoring messages from iCloud" appears for a few seconds then disappears and no message has been restored). I tried restoring the entire Sent mailbox, then a few messages and then just one message with the same result.
I suspected a corruption in the mailbox, so I repaired the disk (no errors found) and reindexed the mailbox according to this article http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14876 and tried again but still no luck.
I'm very puzzled. Any advice?

Don't know why they disappeared. Did you check all setting for the mailbox behaviors? If any are set to delete from the servers after a certain amount of time, then it will do that. Make sure you check each device carefully where the sent messages are stored (server, going to trash).
Also check iCloud.com website and make sure sent messages aren't being sent to trash and deleted after a number of days also.
Also, deselect all iCloud mail from all other devices to test and solve from here. That way no other device will interfer with sent messages. Be sure to check iCloud.com settings also.
When you restore from TM, you should do it from the Mail Application. Open mail and choose Sent Mailbox. Click to enter TM. Go back in time till you see your messages. Click to restore. A folder for TM will appear in the sidebar under On My Mac section. If it is not expanded, place the cursor over On My Mac and choose Show (it will appear when the cursor is over it). You should see your recovered messages there.

Brand new iMac, Can I restore from Time machine or start new?

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