Access the local Mac's Time Machine without its external USB HDD?
Hello.
Is it possible to access the local Mac's Time Machine without its external USB HDD? Or is the external backup HDD required? This is assuming Mac OS X 10.8.5. I am not sure if the newer versions can do it.
Thank you in advance.
Eric Root wrote:
Those are local snapshots. The best thing to due is backup Time Machine and then access it.
Local Snapshots on Portable Macs
How do I access these local (one/1)s without the external HDD connected? I do not get the TM icon option in my top menu bar.
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Hi!
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alex xxxWelcome to Apple Support Communities
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As you are going to use the external drive with other PCs, you can make the volume and format it in "MS-DOS (FAT)" with Disk Utility > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html Finally, you will be able to copy files to the external drive.
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Restoring Your Aperture System
If you buy a new computer or use another system at a different location and want access to the Aperture library, you can install Aperture and then transfer the library from your vault (on your backup disk) to the other computer. If you experience equipment failure or other unexpected events, such as fire or weather-related damage to your equipment, you can easily restore the entire library to your new computer from a backup disk.
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Restoring Your Aperture System
If you buy a new computer or use another system at a different location and want access to the Aperture library, you can install Aperture and then transfer the library from your vault (on your backup disk) to the other computer. If you experience equipment failure or other unexpected events, such as fire or weather-related damage to your equipment, you can easily restore the entire library to your new computer from a backup disk.
HideTo restore the entire library from an external backup disk
If you buy a new computer or use another system at a different location and want access to the Aperture library, you can install Aperture and then transfer the library from your vault (on your backup disk) to the other computer. If you experience equipment failure or other unexpected events, such as fire or weather-related damage to your equipment, you can easily restore the entire library to your new computer from a backup disk.
HideTo restore the entire library from an external backup disk
Connect the hard disk drive that contains the most up-to-date vault to your computer and open Aperture.
Choose File > Vault > Restore Library.The Restore Library dialog appears.
Choose the vault you want to use to restore your library from the Source Vault pop-up menu.If the vault doesn’t appear in the Source Vault pop-up menu, choose Select Source Vault from the Source Vault pop-up menu, navigate to the vaults location in the Select Source Vault dialog, then click Select.
Click Restore, then click Restore again. -
How to restore from Time Machine WITHOUT install discs using a second Mac
It's a question that is asked repeatedly all over the web by Mac users like me that bought in to Time Machine (TM) on the assumption that if their computer died one day it would be a piece of cake to restore from it, only for that day to come and then to be told "ahh, okay the first thing is to get your computers install discs..." (loud crashing sound of world falling around ears).
I've never been able to afford a new Mac and both of my machines were bought second-hand. Neither came with Leopard (both have Tiger and have been upgraded to Leopard via the net). This was never supposed to be a problem as I've been backing up with TM. However it appears that Tiger discs are as much use as an inflatable dart board when it comes to using TM. So I've been faced with the possibility of having to spend £130 (about two hundred Pres Sheets, Yankees) on the Leopard install discs just so that I can have the option of restoring from TM. Bonkers.
However after much nashing of teeth, a very long weekend learning all sorts of things about 'Target Mode', 'Single User Mode', 'Verbose Mode', 'Open Source 9' etc the following solution has worked without the need to go out and buy those over-priced discs...
What you will need:
1 broken Mac requiring restoration
1 second donor Mac running Leopard (or Snow Leopard so long as the broken Mac can run it)
1 firewire cable with the correct fitting at either end to attach both Macs together
1 Time Machine backup
Note: The following is for when you have given up trying to boot from your hard drive. In my case I couldn't boot in to Safe Mode etc. so was forced to format my drive and re-import everything. If you've read this far I'm assuming your at the same point as well and have tried everything else that's out there first.
Also - both my Macs are Power PC's so can't run Snow Leopard, so I can't say 100% this will work with SL (Intel) machines. From what I've read Snow Leopard will work with this procedure too, but if you've found differently please feel free to add your experiences below...
STEP ONE: Format the corrupt Hard Drive or replace with a fresh HDD
*Link the two computers with a firewire.
*If you're replacing your HDD, remove your corrupted hard drive from the 'broken' machine and insert a new one.
*Power up the broken Mac whilst holding down the 'T' key. This will start it up in Target Mode and you'll get a nice firewire symbol floating around that machine's screen.
*Power up the second 'healthy' Mac. This will be our 'donor' machine. When it starts up after a few seconds you will see the hard drive of the broken Mac appear on the donor Mac's desktop.
*Using your donor Mac's 'Disc Utility', format the broken Mac's hard drive (now's the time to partition it etc. if you want to).
STEP TWO: Clone your donor Mac
Your broken Mac is no longer broken and now needs a new OS. But you don't have the discs, right? Well get this... you can clone your donor mac on to your machine, even if they are totally different i.e. a laptop on to a tower.
*Again using Disc Utility, click on your donor Mac's hard drive. The restore tab appears as an option.
*Click on restore and drag the donor Mac's hard drive that contains the operating system in to the Source box.
*Drag the newly formatted hard drive on the broken Mac in to the Destination box.
*Click restore. Your donor Mac's hard drive will now be 'cloned' on to your no-longer-broken Mac. Once this is done, eject the first Mac's hard drive from your donor Mac's desktop. You no longer need the donor Mac.
Ta daa! Your machine now starts up happy and smily again. Time to restore all that stuff that's been sat on your Time Machine drive...
STEP 3: Restore from Time Machine using Migration Assistant
This is the really clever part that prompted me to write this piece in the first place. Time Machine IS accessible without those Leopard install discs you don't have. You need to use something called 'Migration Assistant'.
*Start up your machine as normal and you'll see it is an exact clone of the donor machine. Weird huh?
*Attach your Time Machine hard drive. It will show up as an icon on the desktop and because of it's size, you'll be asked if you want to use it as a Time Machine backup. Err, NO YOU DON'T! Click 'cancel'.
*Open Migration Assistant (if you can't find it just type it in to Finder and click). There are three options, the middle one being to restore from TM or another disc. Yup, you want that one.
*Migration Assistant will now ask you what you want to restore in stages, firstly User Accounts, then folders, Apps etc. It will even import internet settings
And that's you done. Let Migration Assistant do it's thang... altogether I had about 140gb to restore, so it wasn't exactly speedy. This wasn't helped by the fact that my TM hard drive is connected via USB (yes, I know). Just leave it alone and it'll whirr happily away...
Before I go - you don't have an option of when to restore from, and will restore from the last Time Machine save. At least then you should be able to access TM and go 'backwards' if you need to.
Also - for a Mac expert, the above will be up there with 'Spot Goes To The Farm' in terms of complexity. However, for the rest of us the above is only available in fragments all over the net. By far the most common response to 'how do I restore from Time Machine without install discs' is 'you can't'. If I'd found the above information in one place I could have saved a lot of hair pulling and swearing over the last couple of days, so forgive me for sharing this workaround with the rest of the world. Meanwhile your expertise will come in very handy for the inevitable questions that will get posted below, so please feel free to help those people that won't be sure if this solution is the right one for them. I'm no expert, I just want to help people that were stuck in the same situation (and looking at the web, there's a LOT of them).
Hope this is of use to someone, thanks and *good luck*!Most maintenance and repair, restore and install procedures require the use
of the correct OS X install DVD; be it an original machine-specific restore/install
disc set or a later retail non-specific general install disc set.
By having an unsupported system, perhaps installed via an illegal download or
other file-sharing scheme, where no retail official discs are involved and the
initial upgrade was done by other means outside of the License Agreements,
you are asking us to discuss a matter of illegal installation and use of a product.
There are no legal complete OS X system download upgrades online; only bits
that are update segments to a retail or as-shipped machine's original OS X install.
+{Or an installation where a previous owner had correct retail upgrade discs, &+
+chose to not include them with the re-sale of the computer it was installed in.}+
However, to answer the initial question. To get and use an externally enclosed
hard drive in suitable boot-capable housing, and get a free-running Clone
Utility (download online; often a donation-ware product, runs free) you can
make a bootable backup of everything in your computer to an external HDD.
This is the way to make a complete backup to restore all functions to the computer.
The Time Machine has some limits, in that it can restore only that which it saves.
It does not make a bootable clone of your entire computer system with apps and
your files, to an external drive device. A clone can. And some of the clone utility's
settings can also backup changes to an external drive's system; if that other drive
is attached to the computer correctly.
Carbon Copy Cloner, from Bombich Software; and also SuperDuper, another of
the most known software names you can download and use to clone boot-capable
system backups of your computer's hard disk drive contents, are often cited.
However you resolve the matter of the running OS X system in your computer,
derived from what appears to be questionable means, is part of the initial issue.
Since you do need to be able to fix an existing installation by unmounting the
computer's hard disk drive and run the computer from the other (install disc or
system clone) while it is Unmounted; and use the correct Disk Utility version to
help diagnose and perhaps be able to fix it. You can't use a Tiger version Disk
Utility to fix a Leopard installation, and so on.
So, the situation and replies as far as they can go (since the matter does
constitute an illegal system, if it was arrived at without correct discs) is a
limited one. And file sharing of copied Mac OS X (and other) software is
also considered illegal.
And, one way to get odd malware and unusual stuff, is to get an unauthorized
system upgrade from an illegal source online. You never know what's inside it.
The other reply was not a personal attack; the matter is of legal status and as
you have a product with a questionable system, the answer is to correct it.
And if you want to save everything in your computer, make a clone to a suitable
externally enclosed self-powered boot capable hard disk drive. With older PPC
Macs, that would best be to one with FireWire and the Oxford-type control chips.
However that works out...
Good luck & happy computing! -
HT201250 can I back up two different Macs using time machine to the same external hard drive?
I have a MacBook Pro and a Intel Power Mac Tower. The Power Mac is backed up to a 4 TB external hard drive using Time Machine. Can I also back up the MacBook Pro to the same 4TB hard drive using its time machine without altering any of the Power Macs backed up files on the 4TB hard drive?
EdYes, as long as the backup drive is large enough.
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Can I restore photo files from Time Machine without the use of an external drive? While I was transferring photos back and forth from a thumb drive something went haywire and my IPhoto was wiped clean! When I click on Time Machine I see all the dated pages (without an external storage drive connected), go back to a date where all my photo files are there, click "restore", and I get the message: "The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in file cant be read or written (error code - 36)"
Thanks so much Terence. I tried some of the fixes from that page, but then discovered the suggestion to compress the Time Machine Back up of the original library and transfer it as a zip back to my computer as detailed here:
http://pondini.org/TM/E9.html
That worked like a charm. I really appreciate it. -
Can someone please help me re-install my Creative Design 5.5 on my Mac? My MacBook Pro recently crashed and had to have the hard drive replaced. The back up from Time Machine is not reinstalling the program. Since I have the download paid, and codes, I need direction on how to reinstall -- HELP?
Hi bodegakc,
If you have the serial number then please use the below mentioned link to download the product you are looking for .
CS5.5
Also before installing Please go to Applications-->Utilities--> Adobe installers and if there is any uninstaller for CS5.5 , you can remove it and do a fresh install.
You can also use creative cloud cleaner tool before installing.
Use the CC Cleaner Tool to solve installation problems | CC, CS3-CS6
Thanks
Nikhil Gupta -
I just got a new MacBook Pro, and I tried to bring across my files from my last mac using time machine. After it was done copying I can't find my files anywhere but the space (about 130gb) has been used on my hard drive. Does anyone know how I can get to them? I did change my user name from 'user' while it was copying, could this have something to do with it?
You don't want to do that by copying.
Your best bet, by far, is to use Setup Assistant. If your Mac is running Snow Leopard, see Using Setup Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard.
If it came with Lion, it's a bit different: Using Setup Assistant on Lion
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