Does Time Machine restore my hard links?

I have "thousands" of ("ln old new") personal hard links for many different reasons. I decided to test if Time Machine would restore them in an emergency.
I created a folder with two hard-linked files, ran TM, removed the folder, then restored it using TM. The two files came back NOT hard linked.
So the question is, does this prove that TM does not restore hard links?

Király wrote:
I'm not sure what Apple can do to fix this. Files and folders in TM backups are full of a web of hard links. That's how TM works; backup snapshots have hard links to the original file in the backup.
I guess when a file is restored TM assumes there was no hard link on it in the first place, and so removes it. If Apple can set up a way for TM to flag a backup file so that TM knows that it had a hard link on it in the first place, perhaps that hard link can be restored too.
I've been wondering about this, too. It's way beyond my expertise, but wouldn't using Time Machine to back up a hard link require it to hard link to a hard link? I guess it would need a hierarchy of hard links, and a way to only partly "unwind" them to do a restore?
I know you can't make an alias to an alias (OSX lets you do it, sort of, but the new alias is actually to the original, not the previous alias, so you lose the trail). So I wonder if you even could make a hard link to a hard link?

Similar Messages

HT3275 Does Time Machine restore iWeb projects?

I was working in iWeb when it suddenly quit. When it restarted, everything I had done this morning was gone.
Does Time Machine restore this? If so, how do I do it?

Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Does time machine "restore" change all subsequent versions?

Hi all,
This evening I some how accidently "restored" a document I had been working on to a version I started about a month ago. I honestly have no idea how this happened since I hadn't even opened Time Machine when noticed the document was the old version (the program and document had been open on my laptop for days). Anyway, I thought maybe I could just go back to the version from yesterday or a few days ago, but it seems that once today's version is restored to March 28th's version, all subsequent versions are also restored. Is this right?? Am I missing something here? If there is any way to find a previous version of this document (that is not the March 28th one!), I would be estactic.
Thanks!

Your backups never change. Restore again from a snapshot taken just before the unwanted restoration.

Does Time Machine Restore old iLife?

Hello,
I am about to purchase a new iMac and then use TM to clone my HD over to the new iMac, and I wanted to know, if I have a newer iLife on the iMac I buy, will the older one replace the newer on when I transfer everything? Sorry if I am unclear. Thanks in advanced!

ccrosby94 wrote:
Hello,
I am about to purchase a new iMac and then use TM to clone my HD over to the new iMac, and I wanted to know, if I have a newer iLife on the iMac I buy, will the older one replace the newer on when I transfer everything? Sorry if I am unclear. Thanks in advanced!
Depending on how you do it, no. See #19 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Non-Time Capsule network hard drive as Time Machine drive? (D-Link DNS-323)

I'm considering burying a D-Link DNS-323 and plopping a few internal HDs into it to use it as a networked Time Machine backup system.
As far as I've been able to tell, the D-Link DNS-323 will format the hard drives as EXT2, not GUID. Will I still be able to use it as a Time Machine backup drive? Has anyone gotten this setup to work?
Thanks for any and all advice!

his article describes how to get TM work with NAS units (ReadyNAS) - I am currently running this configuration and it works like a charm on wireless. Highly recommended - you just have to modify parts of it for other makes of NAS but on the Mac side you should be fine.
Follow the instructions carefully - it's easy to get ahead of yourself.
Here is the article:
http://www.readynas.com/?p=253
Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS
April 20, 2008 by yoh-dah
Filed under Mac Corner
Leave a Comment
The following is a summary of how to make Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS by DavidB based on initial contribution by btaroli and refinements by sirozha and a host of others on the ReadyNAS Mac/OSX Forum. We are thankful of the Mac enthusiasts who frequent and contribute to the ReadyNAS forum.
Ok I’ve just converted a second machine to use the NAS for networked Time Machine backups, and this time things went straight through without any mistakes. Here’s the run-down:
This example was done using a Mac Mini with a hostname of “magpie”, running OS X 10.5.2 and connected via 802.11g to a ReadyNAS NV+ (RAIDiator 4.01c1-p1 http://1.00a041 with AFP patch loaded). I’ve created separate AFP shares for each machine (”TMmagpie” in this case) and set them to be accessible just to the “owner” of the machine. I could have set up one share to contain Time Machine backups for all clients, but then it could be possible for a user to access someone else’s private data within the backups.
Do make sure to keep the hostname simple — i.e. don’t have quotes in it like “Maggie’s Mac”, or the process will fail.
With the share set up on the NAS already, everything else we do is local to the client (magpie in this case). Some of the commands I list here are run within Terminal.app, although there are alternate (GUI) ways of accessing some of the functions.
This machine had previously been doing Time Machine backups to a local Firewire disk, and part of the process outlined here is to copy the contents of that disk to the NAS so that further backups build on top of the existing ones. No need to throw away the old backups!
1. In System Preferences, turn Time Machine off.
2. Find the MAC address of the machine’s internal Ethernet port:
$ ifconfig en0 | grep ether
This should produce a single line of output, such as:
ether 00:16:cb:af:91:d7
Even if the network backups will be done using a different port (e.g. AirPort: usually “en1″) the system will use the address of en0 as part of the system identifier.
In this case the identifier that Time Machine will use is “magpie_0016cbaf91d7″.
3. Make a new “sparsebundle” on a local disk (NOT the Time Machine disk!). This sparsebundle is a virtual filesystem image which we’ll copy to the NAS, and Time Machine will then access it remotely (that way Time Machine’s not limited by the filesystem features of whatever NAS it’s using: all the funky stuff happens within the sparsebundle). By default sparsebundles can keep growing until they fill up the NAS, but in this scenario we keep other things on the NAS as well as backups, and we’re going to limit the sparsebundle size to 140 GB. We called this one “Backup of magpie” as that’s the default name created by Time Machine, but in fact you can call the volume anything you like.
$ hdiutil create -size 140g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup of magpie" magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle
created: /Users/david/magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle $
This Mac Mini hasn’t had things like developer tools loaded: hdiutil comes with the OS. We make the sparsebundle manually so we can impose the size limit, and we do it on a local disk because of a bug that prevents creation of a sparsebundle remotely on the NAS (although they can be used when in place). The sparsebundle doesn’t start at 140 GB: it grows as more data is put in the filesystem inside it, up to a maximum of 140 GB.
4. If you’re not going to copy the contents of an existing Time Machine disk, skip ahead to step 9.
5. Mount the sparsebundle:
$ open magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle
You’ll see “Backup of magpie” appear as a mounted volume in Finder.
6. Copy the old Time Machine backups to the sparsebundle. In Disk Utility:
Click on Time Machine disk on the left panel, then select the “Restore” tab:
1. Drag the local Time Machine volume to the Source field
2. Drag the sparsebundle volume (”Backup of magpie”) to the Destination field
3. Select “Erase destination” (possibly not mandatory)
4. Restore
This will take a while, depending on how much data is on the drive…
7. If you selected “Erase destination” in Disk Utility, the volume name will have been copied from the local Time Machine disk. Rename the new volume back to “Backup of magpie” (or whatever name you chose).
8. Unmount (”eject”) the sparsebundle volume.
9. Mount the NAS share the sparsebundle will be mounted on (”TMmagpie” in this case). I mount all our shares via AFP, but you can presumably use CIFS also. Once it’s mounted, it will be accessible within Terminal.app as /Volumes/TMmagpie.
10. Copy the sparsebundle to the share:
$ rsync -avE /Users/david/magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle /Volumes/TMmagpie/.
Depending on your network (802.11g, 802.11n, 100bT, 1000bT, etc) this can take a long time!
rsync is smart enough to only copy the new bits of a file, so you can stop and re-run that command if necessary without re-copying everything.
In the meantime you can go ahead and use the machine. Just don’t turn Time Machine backups back on yet.
11. If the local copy of the sparsebundle is in an area that will be backed up by Time Machine, remove it before proceeding. We don’t want to double the size of the Time Machine backup for no good reason!
12. In the Time Machine System Preferences panel, select “Change Disk…”. It will display a list of volumes you can backup to. If the share containing the sparsebundle isn’t listed (you did mount it, right?) it’s probably because it’s not mounted from a Time Capsule or another OS X machine. To show the share in this display you’ll need to have executed the following command in Terminal:
$ defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
You’ll need to log out and in again for this to have effect (select “Log Out” from the Apple menu: you can Restart, but logging out will do). Now mount TMmagie again, then try Time Machine’s “Change Disk…” again.
13. Select the share on the NAS (”TMmagpie”) as the new destination for Time Machine backups.
Time Machine will automatically turn itself back on and schedule a backup to begin in two minutes. If you didn’t populate the sparsebundle with the contents of a local disk, this first backup will be a full backup and can take a very long time (depending on things like your network infrastructure). If you did pre-populate the sparsebundle, this backup will be an incremental backup and shouldn’t take long at all (depending on how much has changed on the machine since you turned Time Machine off in Step 1 of course).
Once the backup has started, keep going with the remaining steps in this list while the backup is running.
14. You can now eject the TMmagpie share. Time Machine will automatically mount the sparsebundle file directly (during backups you’ll see “Backup of magpie” mounted).
15. Unfortunately Spotlight will try to index the contents on the “Backup of magpie” share, which will slow down the backups significantly. To avoid this, as soon as the share is mounted for the first time go to Spotlight’s Privacy panel in System Preferences. Use the ‘+’ button at the bottom, select the “Backup of magpie” share, and Spotlight will then ignore it. If Spotlight has already started indexing it, it should immediately stop and the backup will speed up.
That’s it. Congratulations! New Time Machine backups should happen every hour, and you can access all the backup files via the usual Time Machine interface.With magpie this has allowed us to disconnect the local 200G Firewire disk previously used for Time Machine backups: this drive was significantly noisier than the Mac Mini itself!
GOOD LUCK!
MacBook Pro 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 Mac OS X (10.5.6) NetGear ReadyNAS, Linksys Routers,

Time MACHINE question regarding hard drive restore...

Ok so i need to restore a hard drive with time machine. im going to be wiping my imac HD for a fresh install, hopefully things will run a little quicker. its seeming a little laggy these days. what im worried about with time machine though is that its going to restore all the little fragments of past installed/uninstalled programs and certain logs and settings ect.. the things that are currently bogging down the system. i know that time machine has a list of exclusions of what it doesnt restore.. but do i have to worry at all about time machine installing these things that i dont want? i would much rather just manually restore the system if this is going to be the case.
also, if i would manually restore the system from the time machine drive, i dont think i can just drag and drop backup folders from time machine and then pick and choose individual files and folders can i?
any help would be much appreciated!
just a heads up.. please dont reply if you're giving me your opinion because you enjoyed your experience with time machine restoration. im looking for fact and reality of what time machine does and does not restore. thank you

D00bysnacks wrote:
Ok so i need to restore a hard drive with time machine. im going to be wiping my imac HD for a fresh install, hopefully things will run a little quicker. Its seeming a little laggy these days.
That's rather a drastic step, which most likely won't help much, if any. Unlike with Windoze, you're usually better off to diagnose and fix the actual problem. See Baltwo's post here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11853228&#11853228
what im worried about with time machine though is that its going to restore all the little fragments of past installed/uninstalled programs and certain logs and settings ect.. the things that are currently bogging down the system. i know that time machine has a list of exclusions of what it doesnt restore.. but do i have to worry at all about time machine installing these things that i dont want?
If you tell Time Machine to do a full system restore, yes, it will do that. With certain exceptions, such as system work files, trash, most caches and logs, it will put your system back just as it was. That's it's purpose, after all.
i would much rather just manually restore the system if this is going to be the case.
Really? See the pink box in #11 Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. Actually, it would be worse, if you don't use +Migration Assistant+ for your data.
also, if i would manually restore the system from the time machine drive, i dont think i can just drag and drop backup folders from time machine and then pick and choose individual files and folders can i?
You can't restore OSX that way. You can copy your data, but that may not work in all cases, and you'll likely have all sorts of permissions problems, as OSX will think the backups belong to a different user.
just a heads up.. please dont reply if you're giving me your opinion because you enjoyed your experience with time machine restoration. im looking for fact and reality of what time machine does and does not restore. thank you
You want free help, but only if it agrees with your version of reality? That's pretty cheeky.

HT201250 Does Time Machine backup and restore Bootcamp?

I am replacing defective hard drive in an iMac that I primarily use as a pc under Bootcamp. I have to find some way to clone and restore the bootcamp partition. I was told today by a Genius at the Apple store that I should buy a 2 TB external (which I did for $150) and run Time Machine. He assured me that my bootcamp partition would be backed up along with the entire mac partition and that I would be able to restore everything perfectly on the new hd. Now that I am home and continuing my research, I can't find anywhere that says it will work. Documentation on Time Machine fails to mention bootcamp. So, does Time Machine backup and restore bootcamp or not? And will it be bootable after the restore? Help!

I think you've got it! I have never used WinClone so I cannot attest to how well it will work, but it's pretty much all lthere is. You will have to create a new Boot Camp partition on the new drive, and it should be the same size as the partition you cloned.
Be sure you prep the new hard drive:
Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. Quit DU upon completion and return to the installer. Now install Snow Leopard or restore from your Time Machine backup.

My Macbook Pro was stolen, and I have replaced it with a Macbook Air. New hard drive is too small for a Time Machine restore. How do I restore my more-expensive apps (ie iWorks) on my new Macbook without repurchasing them?

My Macbook Pro was recently stolen, and I have replaced it with a Macbook Air. I attempted to simply do a restore from the Macbook Pro's Time Machine backup, but since the new Macbook Air's hard drive is significantly smaller, a Time Machine restore was not possible. I even tried to choose only settings or only my User Profile (option) when restoring, but the backup was still too large to do a restore onto the new machine. How do I restore my more-expensive apps (ie iWorks) onto my new Macbook without repurchasing them? Also, I reaad somewhere that if you went to the Mac App Store and attempted to repurchase the app and clicked BUY, it would simply alert you that you have already purchased the app (and trigger a re-download)... NOT THE CASE... So I just dropped another $19.99 for a second copy of Pages... Not my intention....
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
LM

you should get a usb backup drive as well. time machine has limited use in my eyes. it saves things. but older things can be errased ad space drops without telling you
nothing beats data redundancy. 2 saves is. 1. and 1 is none
im personally not fond of time machne though i use it only for a recovery parameter for a mac
id never ever myself consider time machine a genuine data backup tool. though most do consider it as such
drive clones such as superduper and carbon copy cloner can clone your entire drive for emergency recovery. and you can boot from them as well o. another mac

I have three computers backing up onto the same Time Machine. The Hard drive of one has now failed, and I'd like to restore certain items (principally photographs) to one of the other two computers. How can I do this?

I have three computers backing up onto the same Time Machine. The Hard drive of one has now failed, and I'd like to restore certain items (principally photographs) to one of the other two computers. How can I do this?

"You can also browse the original backup disk for past backups by using "Browse other Time Machine Disks"--to see this choice, hold the Option key then click the Time Machine menu in the Finder (to see the menu, "Show Time Machine status in the menu bar" must be selected in Time Machine preferences."
Mac 101: Time Machine

HT201250 When getting a replacement Seagate hard drive for my Imac through Apple, will they restore my system to it's current state? Or will I have to do it myself though Time Machine? Will Time machine restore all the programs as well?

Apple has determined that certain Seagate 1TB hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems may fail. These systems were sold between October 2009 and July 2011.
Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) will replace affected hard drives free of charge.
Will this replacement program restore my system to its current state after the new drive is installed? If not, will I have to have all my original disks to re-install all the programs on my current computer, or will Time Machine restore them as well?

Most of them will tell you to backup your data.
Time Machine is nice, but unless you are interested in archival backup, Carbon Copy Cloner is a lot easier to recover from:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1992

Does Time Machine really restore all files of app?

Hi mac people,
I have done a clean install, then i don't want use migration assistant to move back things, but when i move back garageband 6.0.5, i open it, then i realise that only app is been restore but all the loops and audio is not, then i search online found that i have to move those things by my own,
So this problem make me wondering does time machine really fully restore?
I also wondering how about other apps or files do they really all been restore even they SEEN like no problems?
Thanks for helping !!!!!

then i realise that only app is been restore but all the loops and audio is not, then i search online found that i have to move those things by my own,
If you want everything restored from Time Machine, don't use Migration Assistant but use Setup Assistant - migrate al files when you are first prompted to restore from Time Machine or another Mac, after a clean install.
you can select what to restore - the settings, the libraries, the user data.
Since you do not want to use the assistants - to restore Garageband 6.0.5 manually, you transfer all files and folders in the system library:
/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/
and the loops from
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/
Your plug-ins from
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/
and the corresponding folders in your user library ~/Library/

After restoring from Time Machine to new Hard drive, system will not boot

I replaced my hard drive on my Macbook (2008 model) with a larger drive. I then put in my Snow Leopard disk, and followed the steps to restore from Time Machine backup. a few hours later it said it was restored, but when trying to boot up, I just get a blue screen with an occasional flicker to the Leopard screen. I tried an earlier back up as well but with the same results. Any suggestions??

Same exact problem here just yesterday, folks.
Got a bigger hard drive on my MacBook Pro (15-inch Core 2 Duo) and installed it. Followed the restore procedures from Gizmodo (http://gizmodo.com/333319/the-secret-of-the-time-machine+assisted-hard-drive-swa p). Then got the blue screen immediately after the chimes.
I only managed to transfer my old disk content by using CarbonCopyCloner.
Having said that, your solution looks uselful, Portland Mac! :
Portland Mac wrote:
... But when I decided to try and just do a fresh install and work my way back through all my software, I started by installing Snow Leopard and suddenly it boots and everything from my Time Machine backup is there...
But I would not say the following:
Portland Mac wrote:
... On a new drive apparently you have to install Snow Leopard before you do a time machine restore.
Am I mistaken, or did you do a fresh install after restoring your TimeMachine backup?
In any case, I found an interesting Apple article that might confirm that there is a problem: [Mac OS X v10.6: Issues after restoring a Mac from a Time Machine backup made with a different Mac ("Restore System From Backup…")|http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3243]. Or is it a completely different thing?
And another discussion that might give some good advice: [http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12578529#12578529]. Personally, I will now do as the man says: two backups, on two different external hard drives, using different apps, the other one being CarbonCopyCloner...
For info, and I don't know whether that matters, my backup disk had been full and some past content had been erased automatically by Time Machine. But I don't think this should have mattered...

HT201250 i have plugged in a hard drive into my macbook, opened time machine, but my hard drive does not appear. why?

i have plugged in a hard drive into my macbook, opened time machine, but my hard drive does not appear. why?

Look in the Utility folder which is located inside the Applications folder.
You don't want to do anything with the disk on a PC if you want it to work on the Mac. They both use different formats.
Allan

Restore using Time Machine to new hard drive, but last "full" backup was 2012. how do I restore the rest of the Time Machine backups, particularily IPHOTO libraries for each user?

Restore using Time Machine to new hard drive, but last "full" backup was in 2012. How do I restore the rest of the Time Machine backups, particularily IPHOTO libraries for each user?
I entered Iphoto for my user and only photo up until 2012 were in the library. I thought the restore would do the incremental Time Machine backups too.....
Running 10.8.2

It usually means you are running Mavericks but have an earlier version of iPhoto. Open the App Store and upgrade your version of iPhoto to the Mavericks version.
The iWork apps are free with a new iOS device since 1 SEP 2013. They are free with a new Mac since 1 OCT 2013. They are also free with the upgrade to OS X Mavericks 10.9 if you had the previous version installed when you upgraded.The iWork apps are free with a new iOS device since 1 SEP 2013. They are free with a new Mac since 1 OCT 2013. They are also free with the upgrade to OS X Mavericks 10.9 if you had the previous version installed when you upgraded.
iWork and iLife for Mac come free with every new Mac purchase. Existing users running Mavericks can update their apps for free from the Mac App Store℠. iWork and iLife for iOS are available for free from the App Store℠ for any new device running iOS 7, and are also available as free updates for existing users. GarageBand for Mac and iOS are free for all OS X Mavericks and iOS 7 users. Additional GarageBand instruments and sounds are available for a one-time in-app purchase of $4.99 for each platform.

Time Machine Restore Problem on A New Hard Drive

I am trying to restore my data from my time machine after a hard drive replacement which was done for me at my local Apple Store today. I started my Mac with the new drive and it starts like a new Mac. It then asked me during the first boot if I wanted to transfer from my time capsule which I selected. The transfer process then commenced taking 8 hours. This completed and then it took me Registration Information. This is a form which I filled in but the Continue button is greyed out even though the form is complete. The only field that I cannot enter data into is My Account (a drop down which won't provide me with any options to select). I assume the reason for the continue button being greyed out is because I cannot choose from My Account. However there is no way to select it. So I am in Limbo here. My data has been transfered but I am stuck in this process and can't Go Back (it is also greyed out). ESC doesn't work either. Any suggestions.PLEASE HELP!

Try restoring the specific files.
http://pondini.org/TM/15.html

Does Time Machine restore my hard links?

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