Clicked on a suspect link--should I restore from time machine?

Hey, was hoping I could get some advice. I accidentally clicked on what I belive was a phishing link. I didn't enter any account information on the site nor did I seem to download or install anything. But I'm pretty sure I have installed Java at some point and most certainly did not have it disabled--so from what I have read it sounds like there is a possibility that I could have picked up some malware from this site. I cleared my browser cache and and shut down my iMac and haven't brought it back up yet. i've changed all my major passwords on another machine. So here's what I'm looking for some insite on: I have a time machine backup that is a week or so old stored on an external drive that wasn't attached to my iMac at the time. Do I restore my machine from the time machine from back up? Would that be sufficient or would I need to first delete the drive and reinstall the OS? Am I totally overreacting? Any advice would be welcome, thanks!

As long as you didn't download or install anything there is nothing you need to do.

Similar Messages

Should I restore from Time Machine, replace hard drive, or neither?

I appeared to have a full functioning Macbook Pro, until I ran Onyx, and after scanning my hard drive, it said that there were issues and restarting in recovery mode and repairing the disc should be done. Both Disk Utility and DiskWarrior were unable to repair the damaged hard drive.
Obviously replacing the hard drive would sort out the problem, and I realise that it might be a sign of the start of a failing hard drive... OS X said to backup, erase my drive and restore, so should I do a restore from Time Machine?
Or should I just leave things now until there are more signs of failure?

Alilynx wrote:
I appeared to have a full functioning Macbook Pro, until I ran Onyx, and after scanning my hard drive, it said that there were issues....
OnyX runs the same Disk Utility program that's in your Applications/Utilties folder, it uses the Terminal/command line verision. The Disk Utility program is a GUI front end to the Terminal version.
OnyX launched the Terminal version of Disk Utility in other words, and so it's Disk Utility that is telling you that there is a problem with the drive it's unable to repair.
it said that there were issues and restarting in recovery mode and repairing the disc should be done.
Disk Utility on the Macintosh HD partition (in OS X) is telling you to boot into Recovery HD partition and use that version of Disk Utiltiy to repair the Macintosh HD partition. To do this you hold the command and r keys down and boot the computer.
Both Disk Utility and DiskWarrior were unable to repair the damaged hard drive.
Yes because to be able to repair the Macintosh HD partition it can't be booted from, why you instead boot from the Recovery HD partition instead.
Obviously replacing the hard drive would sort out the problem
You don't need to go that far at this point, unless the drive is having mechanical issues.
OS X said to backup, erase my drive and restore, so should I do a restore from Time Machine?
You have software issues, when booted from the Recovery HD partition that version of Disk Utiltity says it can't repair the Macintosh HD partition then it's time to erase the Macintosh HD partition and restore from TimeMachine.
However there could be a problem if the data on your TimeMachine drive is not current or is also corrupted which it copied from the failing internal drive.
You might want to perform data recovery steps first to grab your data off the Macintosh HD partition so you have a clean copy.
Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
If this is all above your head, your local PC/Mac repair shop will image your current boot drive to a new extenral drive, then erase the Macintosh HD partition and reinstall OS X for you or restore from TimeMachine etc.
They will hand you the external drive with your files and everything which you can pick through to restore back to your machine.
It all depends how important your data is, because if you go and erase the Macintosh HD partition, your destroying one of your copies leaving only one on the TimeMachine drive, which might be in worst shape or outdated without your knowledge.

HT1379 I had to restart by resetting the NVRAM/PRAM. Now I have a window showing OS X Utilities. My options are restore from Time Machine Backup (which I could do), Disk Utility to repair or erase, get help online or reinstall OS X. What should I do?

I had to restart by resetting the NVRAM/PRAM. Now I have a window showing OS X Utilities. My options are restore from Time Machine Backup (which I could do), Disk Utility to repair or erase, get help online or reinstall OS X. What should I do? The problem began when I tried to restart my computer and the only thing I saw was the grey screen, Apple logo, and the timer; the computer wouldn't restart from there.

I searched through trouble shooting options on the Apple Support page and was able to make it this far.

HT4718 Installed new hard drive, click on restore from time machine, get to 'select a destination' but just keeps searching for disks.. any help please?

Installed new hard drive and want to restore from time machine.
Get as far as 'select a destination' then it goes no further - just keeps 'searching for disks'
Help anyone please?

1. Be sure your drive is attached and mounted.
2. If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next step.
3. In the Finder, choose Go > Utilities. The /Applications/Utilities folder will open.
4. Launch Disk Utility.
5. Click the icon for your external hard drive in the sidebar on the left.
6. Click the Erase tab along the top of the window.
7. From the Volume Format menu, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
8. Enter a name for the external hard drive in the Name field.
9. Click the Erase button.
Make Sure that you choose the correct drive

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!

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.

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.

Cannot restore from Time Machine or Reinstall - MacBook Pro Yosemite

Hi all,
I recently started using a new Mac (Macbook Pro 15" with Yosemite) about 2 weeks ago. Upon startup it asked whether I wanted to encrypt and I said yes. It then froze for about 30min with the spinny wheel. After the startup was finally complete I used it normally for the next two weeks but the FileVault encryption in Security & Privacy never completed. It was stuck on "encryption paused" and underneath said "Connect to power adapter to continue encryption". Nothing I did fixed the problem. I then did a Time Machine Backup onto a USB with plans to restore from Time Machine. The backup went successfully with no issues. I put the Mac into recovery mode (command+R) and did Restore from Time Machine Backup. It was able to find my Time Machine Backup on the USB, and in the next window "Select a Destination" it found my HD. I clicked restore and there was an immediate error saying that I should restart the computer and try again. From then on in "Select a Destination" it now says "No Time Machine backups were found." This is strange because I already selected the time machine backup and should be looking for a destination now, but regardless nothing can be found.
From there I went to Disk Utility and verified. There didn't appear to be anything wrong. I did repair disk and it didn't seem to do anything.
Then I tried to do a Reinstall OS X. On "Select the disk where you want to install OS X" the only options are my USB with the backup, or "Recovery HD". If I click Recovery HD there is a pop-up saying "This disk is locked." There are no other choices for install, and leaving Recovery mode doesn't appear to be possible.
Does anyone have a solution to this? So far my experience with Yosemite on two different macs has been torture and I do not recommend.
Thanks!

You have a warranty. Take it back and ask the store to fix it for you. You do not need to encrypt the drive, but the Yosemite installation does so automatically unless you select the option not to do so during the install process. You need to look for that carefully. As of now you would need to turn off FV2 to decrypt the drive which takes about as much time as encryption does - quite a while unless you have a small capacity SSD.

IPhoto: Photos appear as "exclamation" after restore from Time Machine

My hard drive was recently having issues so Apple replaced it for free. I have a 2TB Time Capsule and restored the new hard drive using Time Machine. It seemed to go without issue. However, when going into iPhoto, with some of the Events (seems to be the more recent ones), I get a big exclamation icon instead of the image. The thumbnails seem fine for I can browse the Events just fine. It is when I click a thumbnail that I get the big exclamation. Does this mean that my master image is somehow gone. Mind you, I could see the images just fine before getting the new hard drive. I was have some sort of seek issues on the old one so Apple decided to replace it however the seek issues didn't affect iPhoto as I could use it and see all the images just fine. But now on the new hard drive with the restore from Time Machine, I can't see the images.
Any ideas?

Ah, yes, that is a PITA. Unfortunately, you're not the first.
All I can think is, iPhoto may have been open at the wrong time during a backup.
The iPhoto library is a rather unusual critter. It's actually a "package" (a special folder that's treated like a single file for most purposes), with all sorts of cross-linking and indexing and there's no telling what all (at least by us mere mortals). When iPhoto is open, apparently there can be some things updated on disk, but others still in memory, so a backup of what's on disk would be out of sync and not usable if you restored it. Time Machine usually seems to handle this ok, but I'm not convinced it always does.
Time Machine really ought to send a message if it can't back it up. I don't have a problem with it continuing, and backing-up everything else, since you might not be around, but it sure ought to tell you so you can be sure to close iPhoto and run another backup to be sure. But it doesn't.
Please feel free to provide your opinion here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html

Full restore from Time Machine has not restored my photos

I was getting a triangle with an exclamation mark in it when I tried to click on my photos in iPhoto (photos uploaded from my camera only - iPhone pics are still there). A backup from Time Machine didn't work, so I did a full restore from Time Machine to a date when I knew all was well with my photos but I still get the triangle/!. Where are my photos?

The ! means that iPhoto has lost the link to the original file.
Are you running a Managed or a Referenced Library?
A Managed Library, is the default setting, and iPhoto copies files into the iPhoto Library when Importing. The files are then stored in the Library package
A Referenced Library is when iPhoto is NOT copying the files into the iPhoto Library when importing because you made a change at iPhoto -> Preferences -> Advanced. (You unchecked the option to copy files into the Library on import) The files are then stored where ever you put them and not in the Library package. In this scenario you are responsible for the File Management.

New Mac, restore from Time Machine

My MacBookPro crashed today- hardware problem and in the process corrupted my email folder- not sure how or why. I bought a new machine and when I restored from Time Machine back-up, discovered that the most recent back-up had the corrupted mail file. Is there any way to go back in time, on a new machine, using a back-up from a different one. In other words, I want to restore from a Time Machine state that is 5 hours previous to the most recent back-up. Hope this makes sense.

yes, you can do it but if you need only Mail then it's simplest to restore just your Mail data rather than reinstalling everything which will take a while.
quit Mail. control-click on TM in the dock and choose "browse other TM disks". scroll back to the time you need and navigate to /Users/username/Library
restore the file /Users/username/Library/preferences/com.apple.mail.plist and the directory /users/username/library/mail to the corresponding locations on your new hard drive (delete the existing items first). start Mail. it will say it needs to import your messages. this actually means reindex. let it do so and you should be back to normal after it's done reindexing.

Installed new harddrive and I am trying to restore from time machine external back up. I restarted the computer and held the Command key and the R and the restore utility does not appear. what can I do

I installed new hard drive and I am trying to restore from time machine external back up. I restarted the computer and held the Command key and the R and the restore utility does not appear. what can I do

Command + R keys are for Macbooks running Lion and Mountian Lion only. ( i could be wrong on this)
you have a couple of options:
Do a clean install of Snow Leopard via Install DVD.
Clone your old hard drive to your new hard drive via Carbon Copy Cloner
Or click on the link below to give you a better idea.
Hope you get it sorted out.
http://pondini.org/TM/14.html

Toasted my installation. Restoring from Time machine to 2 hard drives?

I just installed a second hard drive into my macbook pro. SSD is the system drive and HDD is the data drive.
When it was still working, I had my home folder on the SSD and my iTunes and Photo libraries on the HDD. Things were good.
Then I decided to move the entire home folder to the HDD.
Sys Prefs -> Users -> right-click the user -> advanced -> "move the home folder"
and again, everything was good.
Then I read something about having the user Library folder on the SSD is a good thing.
So I moved the home folder back to the SSD. Rebooted and all my prefs were now gone. Figured I messed up something and didn't want to troubleshoot.
So time for a restore.
Attempt 1
- Open Time Machine, select both hard drives, selected a past date and hit restore.
- Got a message that I didn't have enough space.
* I figure this is because time machine restores the entire contents of each drive as entire new volumes as a first step.
Attempt 2
- Go into recovery mode COMMAND+R
- Discovered I don't have a recovery partition
* I guess this is because I cloned my original system drive to the SSD using CCC and it didn't move this part.
Attempt 3
- I created a LION USB Install Key
- Booted from it, and selected 'Reinstall Lion' (because I read an article that I could recover my files after Lion had finished installing)
* Discovered that it reinstalled 10.7.0 and I would have to apply all patches on top. It didn't restore my HDD either.
* Later found out this method only restores the main system drive.
Attempt 4
- Now that I have a recovery partition, I booted from it.
- I selected "Restore from Time Machine Backup"
- Was able to select my Time Capsule, and it gave me choices on which date I would like to restore to.
- I selected and hit restore.
* It's about 25% done now. And I realize that i should've done this in the first place.
Question: Will this method restore both of my hard drives?

hsmp wrote:
Question: Will this method restore both of my hard drives?
No, only a single OSX drive. If both were backed-up, and both contained OSX, there was a (not very obvious) option to select which one you wanted.
See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #14. Section (g) shows this.
If you want to restore the "other" drive, and it contains OSX, run the restore again and select it.
If the other drive doesn't contain OSX, use the "Star Wars" display to restore it, per FAQ #15.

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...

I'm having a problem with logging into a FileVault-protected user account after restoring from Time Machine backup.

Hi all,
My computer had been running really slowly for a while, so I decided to erase the whole hard drive and reinstall the operating system, and then I was going to restore the files I cared about from Time Machine. The main account, which had all my documents and photos, was FileVault-protected. The last thing I did before erasing the hard drive was to run one last Time Machine backup. As far as I remember, I always ran Time Machine backups with the FileVaulted user logged in.
I don't remember whether I was using FileVault 1 or 2. I had been using FileVault 1, but I installed Lion as soon as it came out and I thought I had migrated to FileVault 2 at that point.
Once I erased the hard drive and reinstalled the operating system, I browsed the Time Machine disk and, within the Users folder, there was no folder for the main user account. When I tried to reinstall everything by restoring from Time Machine backup, I'd get the option for all the user accounts, but when I tried to log in with the main one I'd get the dreaded "You are unable to log in to the FileVault user account "User" at this time. Log in failed because an error occurred." Finally, when attempting to restore from the Time Machine backup again, I noticed something strange: After the computer got to about 10% done restoring, it declared itself completed successfully and rebooted.
I've tried a number of tips that came up from questions about similar issues on the Apple support forum, but had no luck. Is there any way to get these files back? Did they ever even get backed up?
Thanks.

Hroodbwai wrote:
I can't find it! not sure what's going on but the only folder shown is the " Shared" folder.
Did you have only the one user account? If there were others, they should also be in the "Users" folder. You probably won't have access to the files inside them, but they should be there.
From what can make out, it looks like it's not backed up any of the files for the filevault account. Can't see user folder when looking through previous backups in Time Machine galaxy view.
Are you doing that from a Finder window set to your internal HD, or your computer name? It should look something like this (with the Finder in List view):
|
|
I'd been logging out and backing up manually on a regular basis.
Scheduled backups should run normally; but they won't back up the File Vault sparse bundle, nor will any run manually.
The only time it's backed-up is when you actually log out.
You should have seen this window on logout:
|
|
followed by this one:
|
|
If you didn't see the second one, or cancelled it, the account wasn't backed-up.

Clicked on a suspect link--should I restore from time machine?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for