Can I undo a time machine restore?

Just been into the Genius Bar today and they did a factory reset (is that's what it's called?).
I was having problems with the HD showing a large part of the HD being used even when everything had been taken off. The Genius Bar people agreed that it was odd and this was the best was to fix it.
At the end they restored (data only) from time machine on a portable HD and I should have checked before I left, but I didn't and now I have the same problem again. Is there any way I can remove that imported time machine data to see if the problem is being caused by the data?
Thanks!

No.
Do a backup. Boot to the Recovery Volume (command - R on a restart or hold down the option key during a restart and select Recovery Volume). Run Disk Utility Verify/Repair and Repair Permissions until you get no errors. Then erase the disk, formatting as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled). Then reinstall the OS.
OS X Recovery
OS X Recovery (2)

Similar Messages

Can I use a Time Machine restore from an older OS to Mavericks?

I ask because I tried about 2 years ago and had no luck. Here's a little back-story so my situation isn't confusing...
My iMac (2010) has been having tons of issues lately. More specifically, when I attempted to upgrade to Mavericks last week, it came back with S.M.A.R.T. errors after a scan, so it wouldn't allow me to update. So, in preparation for the HDD to crap out on me, I did frequent back-ups using Time Machine. Well, the day finally came and my iMac won't "turn on" anymore. When I turn it on, it sits at the Mac loading screen for several minutes and then just goes to a blank white screen. (NOTE: This isn't part of my question but if anyone has any suggestions on fixing this, please let me know, thanks!)
So, back to my question. If I buy a new iMac or a new macbook or whatever, will it be possible to use my Time Machine back-ups to restore everything on it or will it not allow me to because the operating systems are different? As mentioned, I attempted to make a restore on my friend's macbook that I purchased as a spare but when I tried, it came back saying "Different operating systems, cannot restore" or something to that degree. Is there a way around this? Do I have to somehow downgrade the OS on my new machine?
Luckily, I use iTunes for all my movies/music & Adobe Creative cloud so I can easily restore those on any machine but my desktop personal data, photos, etc are on the Time Machine restore. Help me if you can, thanks in advance!

If you live near an Apple Store, make a Genius Bar appointment to have the computer tested. Supposedly there is no charge for testing. They can also give you an estimate.
Genius Bar Reservation US

Can you disrupt a Time Machine restore safely?

Hi:
My wifes MacBook hard drive had to be replaced, and I'm taking her most recent back up (using Time Machine) and "restoring" the new drive so it matches the old drive before that one failed.
I'm doing this directly using Time Machine, but the process appears to be stalled.
Here's what I can tell you:
Upon clicking "restore" within Time Machine, the process of preparing files to be copied began. At one point a dialoge box came up asking me if I wanted to replace the newly installed drive with the chosen backup, keep both newly installed drive and backup, or stop the process by keeping the original drive (the newly installed one) in place.
I chose replace and allowed the process to move forward.
At this point I've got a box on my wife's computer that says "Copying 186, 573 files to Volumes", a progress bar and below the progress bar the text "0 KB of 72.51 GB -estimating time remaining........
I can hear the hard drive where the backup resides working, and the blue light on the front flashing, as it does when information is going on or off the drive.
However, the progress bar is that while and blue striped deal rather than a solid blue line advancing, and the text has said "0 KB of 72.51 GB -estimating time remaining........" for the last hour.
I'm wondering if the process is frozen and I should abort it and start over, but worry that this will foul lots of things up that I won;t know how to fix.
As an addendum, I just realized that at the same time as the restore is taking place, time machine was trying to back up! I've just stopped that backup so there will be no "competition" for the restore.
Any help and/or troubleshooting tips will be much appreciated.
FYI my wife has an Intel Macbook running OS 10.6.8.
SIncerely,
Michael Stryker

Yes, but permissions can get tricky.
See Pondini.. grand master of the art of TM.
See Q17.. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Can't login after time machine restore

Had a new drive fitted today on my 27inch iMac.
Got it home and restored all my data from my time machine backup.
Now I am trying to log in and my password does not work.
Any ideas anyone.
Using MountainLion
Best regards
Phil

Try booting from your Time Machine backup by restarting, pressing the OPTION key and selecting your TM backup drive. This should boot into a Recovery HD where you can use Terminal to reset your password. Open Terminal from Utilities and type resetpassword. Follow the prompts pointing to your internal hard drive.

Canʻt partition after time machine restore

I have been trying to get boot camp to work on my late ʻ07 macbook pro since I need to run windows for my computer science classes. I have had boot camp on my system prior to lion but it seems that I canʻt partition using the assistant anymore. I am currently using about 150gb out of 750gb and I keep getting an error saying items couldnʻt be moved during the partitioning. I have backed up to time machine, partitioned drive, and restored twice with no luck. I even zeroʻd out the drive on the latest attempt.
Is anyone else expiriencing this as I canʻt seem to find anything. If someone could give me tips or tricks to try that would be much appreciated.
Thanks

I've always use iPartition to build/resize/delete partitions. It can do this non-destructively. That fact has saved me hours and hours of tedious work compared to the old "back up partition, resize partition, restore partition". They also make an program called iDefrag, which can be used to consolidate the data in a partition, allowing you to create larger sibling partitions. I've been using their products since 2007 (when I switched over to primarily Mac work).
The company is Coriolis Systems - http://www.coriolis-systems.com/ . They have demos of their software. I know you resolved your problem, but it's good to be prepared for the future.

Undo time machine restore

Hello, is it possible to undo a Time Machine restore on a new setup and start again? I had an iMac that I backed up to Time Machine and then bought a new iMac (May 2012). When setting up the new iMac I chose to install a copy of my old iMac from Time Machine. The new iMac is now a perfect copy of the old one..... only I really just wanted a totally fresh start. Can I undo this process so that I can set up the new iMac as if it is just a new computer and can this be done without damaging the backup of the old iMac that I have on my Time Capsule? Lastly, can I subsequently just take the photos that are part of the old iMac backup on the Time Capsule and save those to my new iMac.
Many thanks in advance for your help.

Last question first:
iPhoto '11: Move your iPhoto library to a new location
If you’ve created multiple photo libraries, be sure to move only the library currently displayed when iPhoto is open. To move a different library, you first need to switch to it
If you start you iMac in Restore mode you can effectively wipe and reinstall Lion, fresh and new.

Can Time Machine restore to a new internal HDD?

hi all, i've got a 1tb external drive that's exclusively used by Time Machine. the 1tb drive is connected to my 500gb mac mini. i've been running time machine for 6 months now daily, i just wanted to know if it was backing up everything on my 500gb drive or not. how can i check that it's working properly?
also, does anyone know how i'd go about restoring my mac mini in case i had to replace the 500gb hdd? can time machine restore everything if i needed it to? if i bought a new HDD tomorrow for example, how could i get my system running back to where it was running today with all of the current settings and files etc? is there any way for me to check that Time Machine will actually restore OS X, all my videos, music and my work should the HDD actually die?
is there an apple link i can read?
thanks for any help.

To answer your question about replacing a hard drive and recovering what was on your old one ...
Yes, Time Machine was designed for that. You may have one of two scenarios:
(1) Your hard drive is replaced by the Apple Store or another Apple repair shop, in which case they usually restore it with the operating system you had before and configure it so it has a new system with no users set up; the first time it starts up it runs Setup Assistant. When Setup Assistant runs, you select the option to restore from a Time Machine backup. It will then automatically restore your entire hard drive to the newly installed one. Everything will be just as it was with the old drive. Exceptions: you MAY have to enter user keys for software like MS-Office and Adobe Photoshop. and you MAY have to reinstall your printers and scanners.
(2) If the hard drive is replaced but no operating system or anything is put on it, you need to boot from your Install-OS-DVD and install a new operating system on the new drive. Then, on the first reboot, Setup Assistant runs and you can follow the instructions from (1) above.
A good informational site about Time Machine is here: http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
How do you know that your Time Machine backup is a good one? You can peruse through all the backups by running Time Machine and manually inspect that the files in those key folders (photos, music etc.) are all there and have the right sizes. You can "test recover" selected folders to a scratch location just to check that it works. I suggest you obtain another external drive and use it to make a "clone" of your internal drive using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. This is like a second backup, a failsafe in case, say, your Time Machine drive were to fail. This is not unheard of, since a power failure could cause both your internal drive and Time Machine drives to crash at the same time. The "clone" should be unplugged and stored separately to avoid this issue. You can update the clone, say once a week or once a month.

Since I updated to iPhoto 9.5.1, my library is not listed or available. How can I find it? Can I use the time machine to restore it?

Since I updated to iPhoto 9.5.1, when I open the program, I am now asked what library i wish to use and none are listed. I can not find my photos. How can I find and restore my photos. Can I use the Time Machine to do this?

You may be launching an older version of iPhoto from your Dock. Try to launch iPhoto directly from the Applications folder. Does that find a library to open?
If not, search with Find Any File for traces of your iPhoto library, as described by Old Toad in this post:
Re: My iPhoto Library disappeared...how do I get it back?
Download and run Find Any File to search for a file with "ThumbJPGSegment" in the file name. These are files common to all versions of iPhoto libraries.
FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages. If there's a library hiding somewhere on your hard drive FAF will find it.
If that does not work, try to restore from your backup:
The photos were stored on the iMac hard drive. I do have the Time machine with backup on my Airport WIFI.
To restore from Time Machine, you need to open the folder, where your iPhoto library should be, before you enter Time Machine. Then go back in time along the timeline to the right of the TimeTunnel window.

Tried to restore my mac pro, now it`s not working, can i use the time machine backups?

Tried to restore my mac pro, now it`s not working, can i use the time machine backups?

Yes.

How can I get my time machine to allow me to recover files again? After upgrading to OS X, the time machine still backs up the files; but, I'm not able to navigate within the time machine or select any folders or files for restore.

How can I get my time machine to allow me to recover files again?
After upgrading MBA to OS X, the time machine still backs up the files; but, I'm not able to navigate within the time machine or select any folders or files for restore.
I've searched and can not find a solution to the problem that's being encountered.

Yeap that all makes sense now.
Do you only have the current backup showing in the TM display?? Won't it fill in the rest?
Over wireless are you waiting for the indexing to finish.. ??
Previous backup may not show for a couple of hours.
Long short of it.. Mavericks version of TM is a pain.
Sometimes it is easier to completely ignore the TM backup and do the restore manually.
I have posted the details here. See if this helps.
Can't access old files on time capsule

I had to restore my 2006 MacBook Pro back to factory settings (Tiger 10.4). Can I use my Time Machine back up from Snow Leopard to put it back the way it was?

I cannot locate my Snow Leopard disks but I was able to use the Tiger disk that came with the computer to restore it. However, it completely erased it and set it back to Tiger. Can I use my Time Machine to put Snow Leopard and my data back on the computer?

You can't restore a Time Machine backup made with Snow Leopard onto a system with Tiger. You can, but you will damage Mac OS X.
In order to restore your Time Machine backup, you should have your Snow Leopard disc. Then, insert it and hold the C key while your MacBook Pro is starting. Finally, choose your language, go to Utilities menu (on the menu bar), choose the option to restore the backup and follow its steps, so you will recover Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Can time machine restore in new HDD?

if i backup my mac os in an external hdd with time machine and then ill change my mac hdd, can time machine restore my os in new hdd?(for example by Recovery Disk Assistant)

Naming it the same tends to make things easier. Time Machine can backup your entire OS as long as you haven't excluded anything in System Preferences/Time Machine/Options.
Another option is to make a bootable clone. You should have more than one backup on 2 different drives since hard drives do fail.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone - SuperDuper
Clone - Synk
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested

Can't Boot After New HD + Time Machine Restore

So a couple days ago my 27" iMac running Snow Leopard started making some weird noises and stalling out. Annoyed, I talked for a couple hours with apple tech support which eventually lead me to run an Apple Hardware Test. This test returned the error
"Alert! Apple Hardware Test has detected an error.
4HDD/11/40000000 SATA(0,0)"
I scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar, and they replaced the hard drive.
After that I got it home and did a System restore from my time machine backup. It finished fine, but when I restarted it got stuck on the grey apple screen with the spinning dial thing.
I called apple back and they had me do a couple things like repair disk, verify disk, and one person had me reboot into this command line mode and type some stuff in. Nothing worked. After that They had me try to reinstall the OS first from archive, and next by erasing the hard drive and doing it. Both times the install fails with a big yellow exclamation point saying that it couldn't install support files and the OS couldn't be installed.
Any ideas how to fix this?
I'm currently trying to restore from my time machine backup again, but I'm not hopeful.

Here's what I got - apologies for any formatting peculiarities.
The problem: 10.6.6 mac won't boot after time machine restore to disk.
Further symptoms: Booting with Command-v shows several errors: usually blued and loginwindow collapse with errors from launchd. Errors will be of the style "dyld: Symbol not found: CSSMOID_APPLE_TP_MACAPPSTORERECEIPT" and other CommerceKit / CommerceCore framework errors.
A solution: Your Framework Security library may be an older version (possible cause with Time Machine below). The easiest way to fix this is to find another, working 10.6.6 Mac, and update the Security library on the broken machine.
Identifying if you're affected:
1) Boot the broken machine into "target" mode - hold "Command-t" during boot until the [Firewire|http://itunesu.utah.edu/terms/images/Firewire_Icon.png] icon appears.
2) Connect the broken machine to the working 10.6.6 machine with a firewire cable.
3) On the working machine, the disk of the broken machine should mount.
4) Open Terminal
5) Run "ls /Volumes" - the name of disk you mounted should be there (in this example, we'll use "Macintosh HD".)
6) Typing in the path of the broken machine, run:
<pre>
nm /Volumes/Macintosh HD/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security | grep random_fd | cut -d. -f2
</pre>
(this does a dump of the library, looking for the version value)
If this comes back with the value 22457 (or less?), your Mac is not booting because it does not have the updated version of the Security library, which is required in 10.6.6 since Snow Leopard added the Appstore / Commerce framework.
Fixing if you're affected:
1) First, make sure the working 10.6.6 Mac has a correct version of the framework:
<pre>
nm /System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security | grep random_fd | cut -d. -f2
</pre>
For 10.6.6, this should be at least "22458"
2) *Be extremely careful at this point* - Make sure on the mounted disk (not the machine you are working on!) run the following
<pre></pre>
2a) Make a backup of the broken library
<pre>
mkdir /Volumes/Macintosh HD/savedLibrary
cp /Volumes/Macintosh HD/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security /Volumes/Macintosh HD/savedLibrary
</pre>
2b) Copy the working version over the non-working version:
<pre>
cp /System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security /Volumes/Macintosh HD/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security
</pre>
3) Eject the mounted disk from the working Mac, disconnect the firewire cable, and reboot the "broken" Mac. It should come up.
If it doesn't, you have problem(s) that are probably outside the scope of this. I'd also suggest restoring your original security library that you saved off.
Suspected cause:
It appears that Time Machine never recorded the change to the Security library after the update. If the library hadn't changed, the machine should have failed to boot like it did after restore the moment a 10.6.6 update was applied.
Inspecting the contents of my Time Machine backups before and after updating shows that Time Machine never updated the Security Framework library - why is still not 100% determined, but restoring from it is definitely broken. Combing through the backup databases on my Time Machine disk:
(I upgraded to 10.6.6 on January 6)
<pre>
for name in 2010-12-30-093337 2011*
do
echo -n "In backup on ${name}, version of Security library is: "
nm "${name}/Macintosh HD/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security" | grep random_fd | cut -d. -f2
done
</pre>
In backup on 2010-12-30-093337, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-04-100707, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-05-082402, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-06-092846, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-07-094827, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-10-093559, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-11-110542, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-12-094137, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-13-103238, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-14-113145, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-18-112856, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-20-114953, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-21-103642, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-24-102321, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-27-002508, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-27-011931, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-27-104406, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-27-114322, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-27-123928, version of Security library is: 22457
In backup on 2011-01-27-134523, version of Security library is: 22457

Update from 10.7.2 to 10.7.3 blown - Time Machine Restore blown

Hello,
summary of events:
Update form 10.7.02 to 10.7.3 went wrong
After Time Machine Restore no more Recovery Partion
Lost about what to do
On Saturday, I startet to update 10.7.2 to 10.7.3 on my MB Pro 15" (2007) Apples Software Update showed the combo update, and so I started download and installation. Just before that, I had run Time Machine on an external USB drive, so I was relaxed.
After about 2 hours, the update was still running with no progress. After another hour, I forced a restart. Not very suprisingly, after the login, the wheel beneath the Apple logo kept on running.
So I restarted from the Recovery Partition, selected my Time Machine-Backup from the external USB drive, selected my internal HD as target and clicked on "go".
While the progress bar showed progress, I waited. Then it seemed to be complete and the MBP restarted. Now I got a folder with a question mark. My heart rate did not yet accelerate, since I had a back up, right?
So I restarted again trying to boot from Recovery Partition - BUT, there was no longer a Recovery Partition. Or at least, nothing I could boot from.
What options do I have? I could get my hands on a DVD that contains an Lion installation from the app store, but that is not the most recent version, as far as I can tell. If I would go that way:
Does the version of the Lion-app matter?
Will it create a Recovery Partition?
If not, how else could I restore a complete Time-Machine backup?
Any help and suggestions are very welcome :-)
Regards
Jimbo
Naturally, I a am mad as **** at Apple. First, that they abandoned physical media for Mac OS distribution, and secondly that some not so bright lad thought it not necessary to secure the availability of the Recovery Partition under any circumstances short of phyical damage. This really *****, guys!

Ok... I'm not sure if the following suggestions will work with Filevault 2 enabled. I guess you can try after you create a backup for safety.
You can recreate the Recovery HD two ways. One is to reinstall Lion using a bootable USB thumb drive of the Recovery HD created with the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant. Or from a bootable USB thumb drive with the Lion installer restored to it.
A second way, which I have used many times, is to follow the instuctions at this site using Terminal commands. Step 3 is what you want to follow. The instructions use the RecoveryHDUpdate.dmg file downloaded from Apple to recreate the Recovery HD. It works great!

How do I safely stop a Time Machine Restore midway through?

I started a Time Machine restore from backup at about 1pm this afternoon.
After about 15 minutes of estimating the size of the files to be transferred, it gave me a 19hr estimate for transfer time. I had heard that it could take awhile, so I wasn't totally blown away by the number.
I'm backing up about 200 GB. Well, I'm about 2 hours into it, and the time remaining has been fluctuating from 19+ hours to 14 hours. I'm at about 18 hours right now.
I'm beginning to question the ethernet cable I'm using to transfer the data, and wishing I used a USB 2.0. I've also read up on a bunch of other threads about how painfully slow Time Machine can be, and there seems to be little rhyme or reason as to when it's slow vs when it's somewhat reasonable.
So, I guess there are two questions.
Question 1) Can I safely power down, swap cables, and retry? What happens to the data that's already been pulled over?
Question 2) Should I just let it run for the next 18 hrs? I've also read other horror stories where people return to their machines after the time estimated, and it's hardly budged.
Any help would be AWESOME! If i could give you a billion help points, i would!

majmanMac wrote:
Was doing a full restore from scratch - I lost a hard drive on Monday, and just got a new one put in. Turns out the estimate was about right, as I'm now writing this from my restored machine.
Yay!
I was restoring from a Time Capsule. For some reason I just assumed it had a USB port.
Ah, yes, it does, but it's for connecting a printer or USB drive, not a Mac.
My concern that i would come back to it this morning and find it still updating has been put to rest. Phew!
Glad it's sorted out, but it does seem like there may be a problem -- that's awfully slow. See #D2 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
And be forewarned: since you have a new drive, Time Machine's next backup will almost certainly be a full one, so remain connected via Ethernet. If there isn't enough free space for that, it will take an extremely long time for Time Machine to delete a lot of old backups to make room. You might consider manually deleting a lot of them, per #12 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Can I undo a time machine restore?

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