Can I restore from Time Machine without installer disk?

Laptop is mounted in FW target mode to Mac Mini, which in turn is connected to Time Capsule containing laptop's backups.  Is there a way to restore laptop's HD from TC without having a Mac OSX installer disk?

It won't be recognized, because of a different MAC address. So the easiest way to restore the Laptop is to boot it from installer disc and restore the Backup.

Similar Messages

  • 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!

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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 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.

  • Restore From Time Machine Without DVD

    I'm trying to set up a "simple" robust backup system for my father-in-law who is computer/mac neophyte.
    I have an external USB drive with two partitions. One partition has a very thin bootable 10.5 which has only Disk Utility and DiskWarrior in the Dock; the other is set up for Time Machine, pictures, etc...
    My question is, from the 'boot' drive, how can I restore the main/internal drive with the Time Machine backups? Is there a way to extract that "Restore System From Backup..." utility from the DVD?
    Thanks

    Thanks for the response V.K. I did the "thin" OS to allow him to run Safari (web search, etc...) in the event his main drive didn't work. Yes, I did have the idea of installing the install image on a small partition, but that would mean there are two bootable options and extra levels of complexity. Plus, it seems a little silly to carve out 8GB just for that utility.
    Here's what I want to tell him (his name is Jim BTW) -
    Jim, if you are having problems with your computers, here's what you should do:
    1. Reboot and hold down the option key
    2. Select the "Boot" drive
    3. After the desktop shows, launch Disk Utility from the Dock
    4. Select "Jim" and press [Repair Disk]
    5. If you get errors try it again
    6. If you still get errors, quit Disk Utility and launch DiskWarrior from the Dock
    7. Select "Jim" and Press [Rebuild]
    8. Press [Replace]
    9. Quit DiskWarrior
    10. Reboot, hold option key, Select "Jim"
    11. If it still doesn't work/flaky, reboot hold the option key
    12. Select "Boot"
    13. After startup select <not available> to restore from Time Machine
    It's the "<not available>" utility that I'm looking for...

  • 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.

  • Is there anyway to restore from time machine without leopard cd?

    i really badly screwed up my system by deleting files i shouldnt have,
    and now i have a kernal panic at startup.
    i bought this macbook in america and left the cds there (duh) - so i cant restore from time machine...
    is there a way to do it or do i need the cds to wait for the leopard cd to get here in the post?

    Yes, need those DVD.
    Maybe these help:
    http://duncandavidson.com/2008/01/restoring-from-time-machine.html
    http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2008011623365026

  • Can I restore from Time Machine backup after replacing hard drive

    I'm planning on replacing the 250GB hard drive in my mid 2010 13 inch MBP with a larger one. My MBP comes with Snow Leopard, and I've installed Lion and recently Mountain Lion from App Store. Can I use my Snow Leopard disc to boot up the laptop after replacing the hard drive, and restore Mountain Lion and everything else from the latest backup in Time Machine without having to install Snow Leopard?

    Welcome to Apple Support Communities
    Press Command and R keys while your Mac is starting and restore your backup. You shouldn't use 10.6 to restore the Mountain Lion backup

  • 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

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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