Follow-up to my question regarding restoring time machine.

I do not have a back-up disk to retore apps to my iMac.
David

Similar Messages

How to restore Time Machine multiple drives

Hey, fellow Mac-ers. I have a new situation for me, and some questions on how Time Machine works. I have a Macbook Pro, bought it from Apple, set up Time Machine, and voila, everything is awesome. But, now I have upgraded it to a second hard drive (made the Superdrive external), and Time Machine appears to be backing up the iTunes and iPhoto libraries that I moved to the second drive. Great.
A. But, let's say the worst happens - how do I restore it?
A.1. Let's say I have to buy a new hard drive, this one with double-capacity, so can I restore both drives to the one?
A.2. Or, let's say the second drive (a standard hard disk instead of SSD) dies, can I just restore that volume?
A.3. Or, let's just say I have 2 new blank hard drives, will Time Machine just restore volume-to-volume like it was backed up?
B. That takes me back to, how does Time Machine work after all? It seems to have automatically recognized the new volume and included that in the backups, but I am inferring that from the total data size it says it is backing up.
B.1. How can I tell for sure? I see where I can exclude from backup, but nowhere where I can include, or a list of backed up folders/volumes. I guess I can open Finder to a folder on the new volume, and enter Time Machine - that should show a stack of folders back through time.
B.2. On the new volume, what exactly is it backing up? Everything? I noticed it didn't back up everything from my boot volume - it probably only backs up /Applications, /Users, things like that - but not /etc, /var, or other stuff where I may have edited scripts and config files. My cron jobs were gone after restore.

Exactly what happens with Time Machine (TM) in yosemite is somewhat of a mystery to all of us.
But if you want to know some basics of how TM works.. it is here.
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Read at least the first two articles.. and at least glance over FAQ and Troubleshooting so you know what is in there.
The stuff at the bottom of the home page about using TM as recovery is also very helpful albeit rather old.
TM is designed to be very automated.. and not require user intervention on any major scale. So lots of times people do not know that their backups are not working or have failed.
I think you are better reading the background than me jumping in to answer the specifics.. except to say the multiple volumes is covered in Q32 of FAQ.
You will also see that finding out the exact details of what TM is doing is not super easy.
Read Q7-8 in the FAQ.
But the guy who wrote it all up.. James Pond died a couple of years ago now so it is not up to date past Mountain Lion. Most of it is still relevant.. but Yosemite has been very unreliable.
I have taken to recommending people use an alternative.. there are several third party backups.. The first article you read from above will show you how TM is different from the clone type backups.. let me encourage you to use a cloner. I use Carbon Copy Cloner. It costs $40 but can produce a bootable clone to any external drive. The end result is a backup you can test in a matter of moments that it works. And as a clone it copies everything. That doesn't stop you using TM.. it is excellent for what it does.. (once we get past the buggy introduction of Yosemite at least).
There are a number listed.. Superduper has long been popular and Chronosync has also got a following. I find CCC works great.. but I am not connected.. and I paid my $40 and will have to pay to upgrade when I can stomach Yosemite for more than an hour, so I am not on a free ride.

Mac Mini late 2012 Failed to Restore Time Machine Backup

Try to restore time machine backup to my mac mini. I have made backup right after I got the machine from apple. Now due to some reason I am trying to restore it but failing again and again. Error is something like this:
I have erase disk as default which is required for intel based model but still it didn't work. Please help me out.
Further I have also tried installing fresh 10.8 OSX by making bootable usb. It also didn't work. A question mark appears right after I select USB Bootable Drive at start.
Thanks

Yes same. When I try booting MBP with same usb it goes to recovery menu, (one which comes when you press Cmd+R) I think my MBP is running mavricks thats why it dont go to 10.8 setup. Further when I select same usb in mac mini it shows following screen.
Content of USB are:

In regard to Time Machine. I have two accounts one is an admin account, the other is a standard user account. When I implement Time Machine when I am logged into the Admin account, is the standard user also backed up?

in regard to Time Machine.
I have two accounts on one Macbook Pro running OS 10.6.8. One account is an admin account, the other is a standard user account.
When I initially implemented Time Machine I was logged into the Admin account. I allowed Time Machine to erase the drive and backup the computer. Is the standard user account contents also backed up?
Also after I completed the Time Machine backup session, I turned off Time Machine and removed the portable hard drive. I plan to return in to Time Machine after being away from the portable hard drive for approximately a month. After a short interruption of approximately one month, when the Macbook Pro is reconnected and Time Machine is turned back on, will Time Machine create a new instance of a backup? WIll the back up contain the standard user account changes?

Time Machine backs up by default all the user accounts.
When you reconnect the backup drive after one month, Time Machine will do an incremental backup and it might take a while minutes to hours depending on how much has been changed. With a gap of a month, Time Machine will have to do a lengthier than normal survey of both drives to see what has changed, so it might take some time preparing for the backup. The backup will include everything that has changed since the previous one.

HT201250 When restoring Time Machine after a failure, does it also restore the files to the same order, for example - within iPhoto I have pics/ videos in folders and sub folders organised as family/events etc - will it go back to this exact order after a

When restoring Time Machine after a failure, does it also restore the files to the same order, for example - within iPhoto I have pics/ videos in folders and sub folders organised as family/events etc - will it go back to this exact order after a restore?

Hi Stavros0203,
When restoring your entire system from a Time Machine backup, it is restored to the state it was when that backup was made. See this article for reference -
OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

Can I restore Time Machine "B" to Macbook "A" and then back again?

My family had 2 Macbooks-- I'll call them A and B -- each equipped with an external USB hard drive that we used for regular Time Machine backups.
Macbook B contained some digitized family videos. About 8 months ago it was destroyed by spilled coffee (family member shall remain unnamed!) Apple tech said it would cost as much to repair as it would to replace, and I ended up doing neither. Coffee-spilling family member went off to college with a new Macbook Pro (equipped with a thin plastic keyboard cover!!!)
Macbook A continues to be used, and backed up (by a family member who doesn't drink coffee, BTW).
I would like to recover those video files -- at least to burn them onto DVD's or whatever -- but I'm assuming the only way to access files from a Time Machine backup is to restore that backup onto a Macbook.
So I'm wondering if I can be sneaky by restoring Time Machine "B" onto Macbook "A", getting those video files copied off it, and then restoring Time Machine "A" back onto Macbook "A" again. Would there be any ill-effects from doing this?
Thanks!
Joe

No. See:
iOS: Unable to restore from backup of a newer device

Restoring Time Machine backup to a drive in a "Voyager Dock"

Restoring Time Machine backup to a drive in a "Voyager Dock"
I would like to restore a Time Machine volume to a hard drive not installed in the computer it has backed up.
I have an iMac 24” with a failing drive. It will eventually need to be replaced.
I have my Time Machine back up for this computer in a Voyager Docking station.
I would like to have Time Machine “restore” the iMac’s data to a drive in another Voyager Dock running from a computer other than the iMac involved.
What I hope to do is bring the “restored” drive and the iMac to my Mac service provider and just have them swap the old drive for the new.
How do I get Time Machine to do this?

So, You're saying I can do this from a different computer with its own Time Machine?
In other words, I have my Time Machinedrive from the dead iMac and a fresh, formatted drive both hooked up to an unrelated computer with its own Time Machine.
If I enter Time Machine on that computer won't it show me the data it backs up for that computer only?
Will Time Machine know that there are two Time Machine backups (the one from the iMac and the one from the new host machine), and allow me to select the one from the iMac?

Mac Newbie - System restore/Time machine type question

Hi There, Macbook newbie here, got my macbook for xmas and I am totally converted.
I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of how to set up a 'system restore' type of thing similiar to the windows system restore via time machine.
Do I need to connect to an external hard drive for this?
External hard drive question, are there special 'mac' external hard drives or could I just pick anyone up eg seagate/freecom etc?
Anti virus question: which software would you recommend for Anti virus?
Appreciate any help and looking forward to making them most of my new mac!

kal137 wrote:
Hi There, Macbook newbie here, got my macbook for xmas and I am totally converted.
I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of how to set up a 'system restore' type of thing similiar to the windows system restore via time machine.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
In addition to the info offered by Jolly Giant, Time Machine is rather different from the system restore feature of Windoze.
First, a bit of terminology: +Time Machine+ is the software built-in to recent Macs that does backups and restores. It can back up to an internal HD, an external HD, or a +Time Capsule,+ which is a piece of Apple hardware that combines a wireless router and hard drive.
Technically, this forum is for +Time Capsules;+ there are separate forums in the Leopard and Snow Leopard sections for +Time Machine.+
Time Machine backs-up +*your entire system+* -- OSX, apps, configuration, users, settings, preferences, data, etc. It also keeps previous versions of things you've changed or deleted (so it needs more space than what's used on your system).
You can then easily browse the backups and restore selected items, if you've deleted or changed them in error, or they somehow got corrupted.
Or, if something goes terribly wrong, you can also restore your entire system to the exact state it was in at the time of any backup, even if that's a previous version of OSX. That's the procedure Jolly Giant referred you to in the FAQ Tip.
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
and perhaps browse the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum.
See especially #1 and #5 there before getting started.

Restore Time Machine backup to newly-formatted Macintosh HD

I recently had to erase and re-format my internal start-up drive ("Macintosh HD," formatted GUID Partition Table) while troubleshooting. Turned out it was a failed main logic board, display and display LED backligh, so it was in the Apple Store for 2-3 weeks (long story). I have my Time Machine backups on an external 2TB USB drive, which has its own system, and is bootable. The newest Time Machine backup I have is from 11/13/11, but I thought I'd be safe and do a belt and braces backup, so I used Carbon Copy Cloner to backup Macintosh HD to a disk image. Somehow, I royally screwed it up, and I have THREE CCCloner backups on my 2TB drive (as well as the Time Machine backups). The three CCCloner backups are:
2011-10-26 (October 26) 15-52-21, total 14.18 GB (no System or Users folders)
2011-11-13 (November 13) 21-47-17, total 16.86 GB (System folder = 136.1 MB; Users folder = 1.54 GB)
2011-11-20 (November 20) 18-58-00, total 12.84 GB (System folder = 27.6 MB; Users folder = 1.05 GB)
It would seem I somehow invoked an incremental backup in CCCloner, and I do manual Time Machine backups.
The problem here is two-fold:
1. Between 11/13/11 (last Time Machine backup) and 11/20/11 (last CCCloner backup), I did a LOT of work, that I don't want to lose, but I don't know how to reconcile the three CCCloner backups. I've been in communication with the developer of CCC, but apparently he's taken the weekend off, and we have not yet worked out a way to cleanly reconcile the three CCCloner backups, which is what I would MOST like to do, as it contains the whole week's work between 11/13/11 and 11/20/11.
2. When I erased and reformatted my startup Macintosh HD, I, of course, severed any link between it and the Time Machine backups on the 2TB USB drive.
I suppose the quick and dirty way to get back to my Macintosh HD status is to do the following (found in an Apple Support Archived document):
"Once the drive has been formatted, quit Disk Utility to return to the installer. Go back to the "Utilities" menu again, and choose "Restore From a Time Machine Backup." Connect your Time Machine backup drive, and allow it to be scanned for valid backups. Choose your latest backup from the list provided, choose the destination for the restoration (the newly formatted "Macintosh HD"), then let it do its thing."
Then cherry-pick the new-to-11/20/11 items out of the CCCloner folders. Not an elegant solution, but I can't think of any other. I don't mind reformatting the Macintosh HD again, but then having to pick through the CCCloner dustbin is a big PITA
Anyone have any ideas?
Bart

<< Are the backups in a separate partition? If not, that may be a problem.
How about the CCC backups? >>
Nope to both.
<< That doesn't make sense. A CCC clone should contain the most recent version of everything (unless you omitted things). Where are you getting those sizes? >>
Individual folder "Get infos."
<< Yes, that's how you do a full system restore from your Time Machine backups. >>
Which I did last night, needing to move on with a number of projects.
<< You should be able to use the Finder to find files on the CCC backup from your home folder with Last Modified Dates since 11/13 (or, perhaps better, the free Find Any File app, which will let you pick any folder), and copy them. >>
<< May I ask why, with an iMac, you're doing all your backups manually, rather than letting at least some of them, especially Time Machine, run automatically? >>
The discussion below with Mike Bombich, of CCC, to which I replied just a couple minutes ago, may help explain some things (it will NOT explain my stupidity -- my only excuse is that I was pressed for time after a long and pointless search in all the wrong places for a very severe problem I was having, as you'll see). Why I didn't do a Time Machine backup just before I took my iMac in for service is a question I can only answer by saying "Duhhhh..."
Email from Mike Bombich and my reply between dotted lines
December 3, 2011 8:04:33 PM EST
Hi Bart:
<blockquote>Choosing the "2TB" drive as the "source" in CCCloner would give me the actual, bootable 2TB's system, which has few, if any, of the permissions, settings, etc. that were part of the the original Macintosh HD System files, which is what I'm trying to recover.</blockquote>
Unless you backed up another system to the 2TB volume since November 20, then that volume definitely has everything from your Macintosh HD as of Nov 20. You ran this task at that time:
2011-11-20 18:57:58 -0500
Task: Copying selected files (-psn_0_106522)
Source: Macintosh HD
Mount point: /
Destination: 2TB
Destination path: /Volumes/2TB
Settings
Archive deleted items, owner: bartonbrown
Archive modified items
Do not automatically prune archives
Which means that everything from your Macintosh HD volume was copied to the 2TB volume, and anything that was already on the 2TB volume was moved aside to the _CCC Archives folder. With the exception of the presence of the _CCC Archives folder, the 2TB volume was an *exact* replica of your Macintosh HD volume when that backup task finished on Nov 20.
I think this actually means that the restore process should be really easy. CCC won't copy the contents of the _CCC Archives folder (unless you choose it as a source folder explicitly), so if you choose the 2TB volume as the source and Macintosh HD as the destination, your Macintosh HD volume should be back to the state it was in on Nov 20. I don't see any need to exclude anything from the restore -- anything that wasn't on the Macintosh HD volume was moved to the _CCC Archives folder.
As an aside, you aren't going to find the bulk of your (most recent) Macintosh HD items in the _CCC Archives folder, that folder contains items that were on the 2TB volume when you started that backup task (which means there probably are some pretty important items in the _CCC Archives/2011-11-20 (November 20) 18-58-00 folder). You will find some items from Macintosh HD in there, but they're older versions of files from previous backups, and items that you have since deleted from Macintosh HD.
<blockquote>is there any way to back up onto an already bootable drive with CCCloner and STILL be able to choose the INDIVIDUAL CCC backup I want to restore the Macintosh HD drive.</blockquote>
Yes:
1. Create a new folder at the root level of the destination volume (e.g. "Macintosh HD 12-03-11")
2. Choose "Macintosh HD" from the Source menu
3. Choose "Choose a folder..." from the Destination menu and select the new folder that you created on the destination
When you want to restore from that, you'd boot from the 2TB volume, then in CCC choose "Choose a folder" from the Source menu and select that folder as the source.
You could also choose the "Create a new disk image" option, but I personally prefer backing up to a folder if the destination volume is formatted as HFS+.
Lastly, one thing to keep in mind with either of these solutions is that subsequent backups directly to the 2TB volume (with default settings) will cause the unique backup folder on the destination to be archived. You can avoid that by using CCC's "Protect root-level items on the destination" option. That's the setup I alluded to earlier, in the "I want to back up my startup disk and a data volume to the same backup disk" article.
Mike
To which I replied:
December 4, 2011 1:13:45 PM EST
Hi Mike --
"Unless you backed up another system to the 2TB volume since November 20, then that volume definitely has everything from your Macintosh HD as of Nov 20 ...and anything that was already on the 2TB volume was moved aside to the _CCC Archives folder. With the exception of the presence of the _CCC Archives folder, the 2TB volume was an *exact* replica of your Macintosh HD volume when that backup task finished on Nov 20.
Oddly enough, it wasn't: for one example, the Time Machine backups, which were NEVER on the Macintosh HD volume, are still on the 2TB backup volume, untouched, and so are literally thousands of files and folders I had backed up directly to the 2TB backup volume -- and thousands more I'm pretty sure weren't -- that DIDN'T end up in the _CCC Archives folder, but at the root level of the 2TB volume.
I wish I'd done a window grab of the 2TB backup volume's window before I did my 11/20/11 backup, and before I restored Macintosh HD from Time Machine, but I was so caught up in testing -- 60 hours worth, and all to no purpose -- for what a senior advisor fromr a company whose name is associated with the pomaceous fruit of the species M. domestica (genus Malus, family Rosaceae) was positive was a problem with third-party memory, just before we finally set up the FOURTH Malus domestica store appointment and I had to bundle the iMac up and drag it 40 miles to discover that the "Senior Advisor" was wrong and I was right -- for a change -- that it was a failed main logic board, well... I was working against time, I finally ran OUT of time, and all I can come up with to account for the current state of 2TB is that didn't do the CCCloner backup correctly. (I know that sentence is really poor grammatically, but when one has to tiptoe around landmines, circumlocution is better than circumambulation.
Last night, I had to restore Macintosh HD from Time Machine, which worked fine, except I now have literally hundreds of gigabytes of duplicate files (better than lost ones!) spread over 3 drives. The only recourse I can think of now is to use TidyUp! to winnow out the duplicates and try to understand better how to use CCCloner for backups, or surrender and use Time Machine.
Thanks for all your help. I have a couple other projects I wanted to finish up today, but I can see the day is going to be devoted to salvage operations...
I will just add this: The 2TB USB drive I use as a backup for Time Machine has been bootable since before I started using it as a backup, as is my 1TB USB drive, and all three -- Macintosh HD, 1TB, 2TB -- are at OS X 10.6.8. I also manually back up individual items to both 1TB and 2 TB drives.
Bottom line is, I obviously don't quite know how CCC works, and I thought I could back up -- at the last minute -- my internal, regular start-up drive, "Macintosh HD," to a Disk Image with CCC.
As for Time Machine, its constant and unfathomable-to-me backing up drove me nuts, so I turned it off, and used it to back up, manually, about once a week. Stupid? Yes.
Mea culpa
Bart

How do i reformat imac hard drive and restore time machine backup?

How do I reformat my iMac internal hard drive and restore from a Time Machine backup?
I have an iMac 20" Mid 2007 with a problematic hard drive.
IntelCore 2 Duo, Processor speed 2 Ghz
800 Mhz Bus speed
4 GB RAM
250 GB Western Digital Hard Drive
10.6.3
Was getting a question mark upon booting up, so I booted from a 10.6.3 Snow Leopard CD and ran disk utility. Repair disk was interrupted with an error message. 'Disk utility can't repair disk. Backup files, reformat disk and restore backed up files.'
1. Should I select Erase, Mac OS Extended Journaled, Erase?
2. If I do this, won't I lose my networkability, and therefore lose access to Time Machine backups?
3. If it were you, would you go ahead and replace the hard drive? Not sure I should trust this hard drive!
4. If I need to replace the hard drive, can you send instructions?
Thanks!

Clean Install of Snow Leopard
     1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
         with your computer. Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
         After the chime press and hold down the "C" key. Release the key when you see
         a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
     2. 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.
         After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
         size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of
         partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
         and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
         (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
     3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed
         with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
     4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
         Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same
         username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup
         Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh
         install of OS X. You can now begin the update process by opening Software
         Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.
If you have your Time Machine backup drive connected, then you can use Setup Assistant to migrate your Home folder, application support files, and third-party applications and system preference files. I recommend doing this via the Setup Assistant when the option appears.

Restore Time Machine backup after hard drive crash

My hard drive on the mac book crashed, so I replaced it. Now I need to get my time machine back up on the new drive. I've already started using the computer and reinstalled lion, so I'm not getting the original "backup" screen. How do I find my old time machine backups?

Your best bet is to do a full restore from your backups. See #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

How do I restore Time Machine of my iMac Apps & Files to my MacBook?

My situation:
I have 2 computers (iMac and MacBook Pro).
My MacBook Pro has a suite of software that I cannot transfer to my iMac. Why? Because the liscencing was computer specific (foolish me for thinking I could use one lisnence and have it used on one machine meant that I could unregister the former and register the other machine).
My iMac has Time Machine backups. I recently lost anything and everything purchased on iTunes. I now have that restored thanks to iTunes Support. The now up to date Time Machine backup files are up to date and regular for my iMac.
*The Situation*
My iMac had a harddrive failure. It was replaced twice. then the graphics card failed. It was replaced. So I finally get my iMac back yesterday, now it makes a High Pitch SQUEEEEL!
iMac is back at Apple Store. I was polite.
*What I Want to Happen*
I want to move my iTunes and all my other documents over to my MacBook, via the Time Machine backup.
*What Happened*
Following the instructions found on this forum and the apple troubleshooting/faq sections for Time Machine, it transfered.
*My Issue*
After the little progress meter finished, I cant find the files.
Now my computer directory looks stupid with (copy of copy of copy of copy of MacHDD)
*My Request*
Type of Help that Could Work for Me:
1. Tell me where the files are?
2. Tell me how I should set up my files and time machine and stuff!
3. or, if the above is not possible buy my computers from me, give me CDs and DVDs of my music, movies, and documents.

PowerfulLamp wrote:
Following the instructions found on this forum and the apple troubleshooting/faq sections for Time Machine, it transfered.
Exactly how did you do that? You should have used +Migration Assistant,+ but it sounds like you didn't.
After the little progress meter finished, I cant find the files.
Now my computer directory looks stupid with (copy of copy of copy of copy of MacHDD)
Assuming MacHDD is the name of one of the internal HDs, it does sound like you did the transfer incorrectly.
1. Tell me where the files are?
Probably in one or more of those copies of MacHDD.
2. Tell me how I should set up my files and time machine and stuff!
That's going to depend on exactly what's where, and what you want to do:
Do you want to erase everything on the MacBook and copy everything from the iMac's backups, or do you have things on the MacBook that you want to keep?
When you got the second Mac, did you set it up from the other one? If you did, then you should have identical user accounts on both Macs (they may have different data, but the exact same names and passwords).
And, do you have an iTunes library, and/or the other files you want to move, in the same places on both Macs?

How to restore Time Machine back-up if not even Recovery Tools work?

After a hard and unexpected crash on 2012 macMini I tried everything from this list: OS X Yosemite: Ways to start up your Mac Only 2 things worked: hardware test (via Ethernet: option+D; everything passed) and detailed status mode (command+V) which listed a bunch of errors concerning booting (missing or corrupted files and/or folders). Which is probably the reason I couldn't launch Recovery Tools - neither locally nor directly via Internet (Ethernet plugged in, option+command+R). I would get the message that the Tools are launching, but after the Apple logo showed up followed by the spinning circle, the screen would go light grey 4-5 seconds into the process and the thin black progress bar would appear. It would grow to 1/3 of its length, stop for several seconds, then the computer would restart, the bar would show up again, grow to 1/3 etc., etc.
Assuming that nothing else could be done I started the mini in the target mode (T), plugged it into my old 2007 mini and re-formatted the internal drive, thinking that I could either try Recovery Tools again (no luck) or just clean install Yosemite on the 2012 mini first and then use my Time Machine back-up to restore my files. Unfortunately 2007 mini can only install Lion - even on the external drive - but nothing higher (so I can't upgrade to Mountain Lion, Mavericks and finally to Yosemite). And 2012 would not start with Lion on it. Still no luck with Internet Recovery Tools btw (same symptoms).
The only other thing I can think of is finding a newer Mac and use it to install Mavericks or Yosemite on my 2012 mini. If this fails, it's a trip to the Apple store.
If anyone has any other ideas, please share.
(2012 has no CD/DVD drive)

Your description of Internet Recovery sounded much like Safe Mode, not Internet Recovery. I don't think you will see an Apple at all. It should be a spinning Globe. Or, when you say "spinning circle" was that the globe spinning?
From the App Store on the 2007 mini, can you download the Yosemite installer?
That's about all I can think of besides taking it to an Apple Store.

Trying to restore Time Machine back-up from WD MyBookLive - whats the Password?!

Hi all,
my son has a Macbook Pro running Lion. Yesterday it hung when downloading the 10.7.3 update and wouldn't reboot properly.
We logged in via safe mode and managed to sort this out, however I was initially looking at doing a restore from his time machine back-up. I had booted the recovery partition and chosen the 'restore from a time machine back-up' - then it had prompted me for a username and password to gain access to the back-up...
When I set up the Time Machine Back-ups I always have selected (as recommended by Apple and Western Digital) the Guest user. Therefore I have no idea what the username or password should be??? I've hunted on the web for any kind of answer however theres no certain answer...
I'm hoping someone out there will know what username and password it is expecting? Is this from Time Machine, or a default username/password set by the Western Digital NAS???
I hope someone can help - my time machine backs up both my own, my wifes and my sons macbooks, its all very well having the back-ups but not worth it if I can never get access to them when I need to!
thanks in advance

I think you are not restoring your files in the correct way.
If what you want to do is to restore a complete Time Machine backup, you have to do it in OS X Recovery, so first hold Command and R keys while your Mac is starting up. Then, choose the option to restore a Time Machine backup, and follow its steps.
If you want to restore individual files, you cannot restore that type of user files because you are using them. Instead, you can restore individual files in your user folders. Read > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

Restoring time machine backup stuck at end

Hello!
I recently suffered a random filesystem failure and had to reinstall the OS. I was running 10.7, in fact, I turned on my MBP to install 10.7.1.
After a lengthy download, the installer prompted me to restore from a Time Machine backup, which I'm keeping since my last hardware HD failure. I chose to restore, and the installer detected my Time Capsule, loaded the backup, and started restoring.
I left it overnight and, come the following morning, the restore hadn't finished yet. Again, I left it while I was at work, and came back 8 hours later to find the screen in the exact same way I left it in the morning.
After some tests trying to restore the backup (including a failed back-to-Snow Leopard attempted recovery, couldn't connect to my TC), I figured I would reinstall Lion from scratch and use Console.app to check the progress using the system log when restoring using Migration Assistant.
My first surprise was when I tried to run Migration Assistant using the root user, which made Migration Assistant crash, so I had to create a second administrator user in order to restore my original administrator account.
After leaving it run its course, I started noticing that the Migration Assistant was trying to restart opendirectoryd, and that it was failing to start, citing error 71 "profile could not be found" (or opened, instead of found, I really don't remember and don't have the log here with me).
I then went into the terminal to check if the restored data was on disk, which it was, so, after a couple of attempts of launchd to restart opendirectoryd, I pulled the plug and shut the machine down cold (no shutdown process, just held the power button).
When the computer started up again (I have verbose boot mode on), it stalled at macx_swapon (again, or something like that, I don't remember), and didn't move in the whole hour and a half I let it sit there.
I tried booting single user mode, but the only thing I got to do was check if the restored data was there (which it was), and try to create my user (which I couldn't).
I've had success restoring backups from that Time Capsule but for another Mac.
Is there any way I can restore my computer back to the exact state of the Time Machine backup? FWIW, the TM backup is a data-only backup (i.e. doesn't have the OS with it), so a disk clone is not an option.
I really would like to avoid going the "fake manual restore" option of creating the same user, moving the files manually and so on, it's a PITA
Thanks in advance,
Nico

Sorry, can'thelp. But:
I trust TM only for rescuing individual files. I tried a full restoration of my Lion system, as a test, and everything was restored and seemed OK except half my Mail messages were missing. A few months ago, on OS 10.5.8, TM suddenly told me that it had deleted some files. The files deleted were all from Jan. 2010 to four weeks before! I know that it does this if the TM disc is getting full, but I had not created any large files in the preceding few hours. Also, the TM disc had loads of space left, yet when the message came, TM's GetInfo showed the disc nearly full!. I had to erase the disc and start again.
I don't find TM reliable. I make my backups in the form of bootable clones, scheduled every day in Carbon Copy Cloner.

Follow-up to my question regarding restoring time machine.

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