How do I revert a drive from a Time Machine disk to a completely empty, unused disk?

Hello,
I was performing my first Time Machine backup and my SATA controller failed on my Macbook Pro's motherboard, rendering internal drives inaccessible. The backup that was in-progress at the time had only completed a small percentage of the image and is useless. I am trying to install OSX onto the external drive so my computer will function for the time being, but OSX will not allow the installation because the disk has been reserved as a Time Machine only drive.
I tried erasing the external drive through Disk Utilities, but even after a full erase (went over all data with 0's), it is still showing up as a Time Machine partition. I was able to partition the drive into to two, installing OSX on the second partition and that is how I am running now, but I would like to recover that space that Time Machine has stolen.
Any idea's on how to release Time Machine's grasp on my disk?
Thanks!

There was the one incomplete Time Machine backup. The OS installer says that it cannot install onto a drive used for Time Machine. I have attempted to fully erase everything on that disk through Disk Utilities, even zeroing out the disk, but the installer still recognizes it as the Time Machine drive.

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From Time Machine Help:
Restore items backed up with Time Machine
If you use Time Machine to back up your Mac, you can easily bring back lost items or recover older versions of files.
You can use Time Machine within many apps. If the iCloud Documents & Data feature is turned on, you can recover older versions of iCloud documents as well as regular documents.
Open a window for the item you want to restore.For example, if you accidentally deleted a file from your Documents folder, open the Documents folder. To recover an email message, open your inbox in Mail. To recover an iCloud document, open the document’s app, choose File > Open, then click iCloud to view the iCloud documents for that app.
If you’re missing an item from the desktop, you don’t need to open a window.
From the Time Machine menu in the menu bar, choose Enter Time Machine. A message may appear while your Mac connects to the backup disk.
Use the arrows and timeline to browse the snapshots and backups.White tick marks represent snapshots stored on your internal drive (portable computers only). Pink tick marks represent backups stored on your backup disk. If a tick mark appears dimmed or grayed, there’s no backup available or the backup disk is not connected.
For more information about an item, double-click it.The windows in Time Machine behave just like Finder windows, so you can open folders, click items in the sidebar, and use the search field in the upper-right corner of the window.
When you find the item you want to restore, select it, then click Restore. You can restore individual items, multiple items, folders, or your entire hard disk.The restored item is returned to its original location. For example, if the item was found in the Documents folder, it is returned to the Documents folder.
Many apps let you use Time Machine within individual documents so you can examine and read the document’s past versions to find the version you want. For more information, see:
View and restore past versions of documents
RELATED TOPICSRecover items using Time Machine and Spotlight
Recover your entire system
Revert to a previous OS X version
Use multiple backup disks
Time Machine overview
Time Machine problems

How to recover the autocomplete data from a Time Machine backup?

How to recover the Safari 5.1.7 autocomplete data from a Time Machine backup on Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard)?
To solve other issues (Safari crashing sometimes when saving web pages), I selected:
Safari - Empty Cache
Safari - Reset Safari - Selected ALL - Reset
I could later on recover some Safari autofill data restoring
HD/Users/~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist
HD/Users/~/Library/Safari/Form Values
HD/Users/~/Library/Safari/History.plist
but other autocomplete data is missing, including the one when filling web form search fields in web pages, for instance, and also some username and password login data on some web sites.
How to restore all such data from the Time Machine Backup?
Thanks!

I also recovered:
HD//Users/~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain
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How can I reformat my external hard drive from the time machine format to regular format?

Ok so when first starting out I got an external hard drive for my time machine, little did I know I would run out of space really fast and would need to buy a bigger and better hard drive. Now that I did that, I have my old hard drive that I would like to use for copying material form my laptop to my desktop. However, it is still set as my time machine and tries to back up my lap top every time I plug it in. Also, it says that about half of it is still filled with stuff. I erased everything on it. I just want to reformat it so that it is like I just bought it.

Tirrel wrote:
I had the same idea as you however when I tried going to Disk Utility and I tried to erase it an error message came up telling me that it is unable to erase.
Unable to erase, or unable to unmount?
If Time Machine is trying to back up to it, or some other process is using it, Disk Utility won't be able to unmount it. Turn Time Machine OFF; if you have the drive open via the Finder or any other app, close it or quit the app(s).
At worst, start up from your Install disc or other alternate source and erase it from there. If you're not sure how to do that, see the yellow box in #1 of Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks.

How do I restore all of my data to a newly installed hard drive from my time machine backup? Thanks

I had to replace my hard drive, I am new to restoring the data from the time machine. Is there anywhere that the steps are clearly articulated as I am not that versed in this kind of stuff? Thanks for responding.

Here it is: http://www.apple.com/au/osx/recovery/
As far as I'm concerned, the ONLY way to do this is to connect your macbook to your time capsule via Ethernet and restart it holding down the COMMAND-R keys.
This will take you to a restore prompt which will boot from your time capsule. The restore will then be a complete and up to date version of your old hard disk.
Don't even bother with older boot disks. I wished I got this advice from the many enquiries I made over two days! Restore took 2.5 hours.
Only found out about command R by a random google search late at night. So anybody replacing their hard drive and restoring from a time machine backup - do this!

How do I recover my Bookmarks from a Time Machine Back Up

I just upgraded from a 2 year old MacBook running Snow Leopard to a new MacBook Pro running Lion. Because of the problems Apple has between these 2 operating systems, I can not use the automated Migration Assistant to migrate over any of my old files, user info, or settings to the new machine. I'm having to manually pull over document files and applications from my Time Machine back up disk.
I can't seem to find my Bookmarks from the old computer in my back up files. On the Time Machine drive, I've looked in User, Application Support, Library, amongst many others. Not seeing it anywhere. They don't seem to be in Time Machine at all, or rather they're only there if I do the automated migration for all of my programs and settings. Which of course is not possible, because it leads to massive disk permission errors and a corrupted hard drive on the new machine. One thing I'm realizing i should have done was make a manual back up of my bookmarks in Firefox before I wiped my old machine. If I didn't do this, am I screwed?
If anyone has ideas I would love some help, I really really don't want to lose years of bookmarks.
Oh, and whatever you do, don't buy a Mac with OSX Lion unless you want to waste LOTS of time fixing Apple's mistakes. This whole process has been a disaster so far. There are all kinds of issues with the transition to Lion, I'm 40+ hrs in now. Apple now has their very own version of Vista.

The following has instructions: OS X Mavericks: Restore items backed up with Time Machine
The following is old but specific to iPhoto and may help: iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later)
Also, see http://www.imore.com/how-set-and-restore-time-machine-backup

How to format an external drive used for time machine

My 150 Gig external hard drive showed too full for a time machine backup. It only showed 20 gig left. So I moved the time machine backup on it to the trash to make room for a new one. This did nothing. With the files in the trash the drive still shows full even though it has no time machine backup on it.
So I would like to know how I can format this drive again to get it to accept a brand new time machine backup. Or how do I get time machine to recognize the drive as empty instead of full.
I now know I should have at least a 500 gig drive to let time machine make it's plethora of backups. But the 150 gig drive is what I have right now to backup an 80 gig hard drive and I would like to start from scratch.
Thanks,
JJ Bula

With the files in the trash the drive still shows full
You need to empty the Trash before anything is actually removed from the drive.
If you want to completely erase the drive, launch Disk Utility, select the drive, go to the Erase pane and click "Erase".

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I already have a NetGear wireless router… but it only has ethernet ports out, no usb.
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Another option, where you can still utilize your existing drives, is to consider a dedicated NAS device that supports both Time Machine and iTunes functions. One such NAS device is the Synology DS415+. It would be far superior than what you have now. Albeit at an additional cost.

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Triple-click the line below on this page to select it:
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Recently my time machine drive decided to fail at the same time that I had just wiped my computer and reinstalled OSX. Bummer, huh? I had a lot of important stuff on there. Well, I was able to recover what was on there to another hard drive using a disk recovery tool in Windows (R-Studio). I recovered every file (even the few hidden directories that were on there) to the other hard drive, repartitioned my time machine to HFS Journaled and dumped all of the data back on to it. I even labeled it the same as it was before, so technically it should be the same hard drive right?
Wrong, OSX still doesn't recognize it as a time machine backup when I try to restore from it. I really don't want to have to go through all those 30,000 hidden directories by hand and copy my MP3 collection, photo album, and who knows what else back to the hard drive. Does anyone know how to trick OSx into recognizing this backup as a valid Time Machine Backup? Perhaps it's just one or 2 files in the root directory I am missing.
Thanks so much,
--Ben

I seriously doubt that you can do that. I've never heard of anyone doing something like this. I also strongly suspect that that windows software didn't preserve all the resource fork, ownership and hard links correctly.
You are left with manual migration of your data back to your computer. this isn't as hard as you make it sound. You just need to copy you own stuff back. also use the following [post|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6185507] to migrate important parts of you user library, Mail, iphoto etc. You will have to reinstall your applications by hand.

How to Copy Files from Corrupt Time Machine Disk

Following a series of power outages, my TM disk became corrupted. When I tried to repair with disk utility, I got the message: Unable to repair, copy as many files as you can and then reformat the disk.
My question: Is there any way to capture all/part of my TM backups (they contain a history going back many months that I'd prefer not to lose)? Though I can dig in and get individual files, when trying for anything larger (like the series of backups), they are unable to copy with the files/folders being locked/read only.
Any help would be appreciated. I'll move to a 2 drive backup system after this!
Thanks

TM performs a backup in a rather unusual manner. An initial backup stores all the files in a disc image file. It then creates a special type of alias for each file. When you look through a TM backup you are looking at the aliases, not the files themselves.
If the drive's directory is the only thing corrupted and Disk Utility cannot repair it, then I suggest trying Disk Warrior that can repair many directory problems that Disk Utility cannot.
Otherwise, you will need to go through the backup with the TM application and attempt to restore the good files to another hard drive. Also,
See User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.

How to restore the second volume from a time machine backup?

Hi guys and gals,
I have a October 2011 MBP running OSX lion (10.7.2), with 2 internal drives (the main drive is a 120gb SSD, the optic drive has been replaced with the original 750gb HDD that came in the computer). I use the SSD for all of my system files, with the HDD being used for my user account, which has my photo and video libraries on them.
I use time machine to backup onto a 2tb external drive. In the beggining i was not sure how time machine would handle backing up two volumes, but after doing the first few backups then checking inside the time machine folder on the EHDD I was pleased to find that it was in fact backing up both volumes.
Now we get to the problem I have. This morning I booted up my MBP, and it took a lot longer than it usually does, then when it finally booted it had a error saying that the user "chris" could not be found. My 750gb drive was not being seen from OSX. I ran disk utility and it was visible, but was not able to be mounted as it had an error. I did the verify permissions which came up OK, then did repair disk and it said that the disk had errors and to backup, format and re-install. As the last backup was done 2 days ago and I haven't done any important work on it since then, i didn't backup as I would prefer to restore to a point before the issue happened.
I formatted the drive and started a time machine restore, but TM will only allow me to restore the SSD. I cannot see anything anywhere that will allow me to restore the 750gb drive. If i use migration assistant to transfer the files over from the EHDD to the 750gb drive, it won't recognise my EHDD (even though i am looking at it on the desktop and can open it and open files on it). If i try to transfer the files with finder, it says that i dont have permission to do this.
I have spent the last hour looking for a possible solution or ways of doing what i need, but keep coming up blank.
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Cheers
-Chris

Chris W oz wrote:
when it comes up with the "preparing to copy message" it hits ~24000 files and doesn't go any further.
That sounds like some sort of directory problem. Try Repairing the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
I tried importing individual folders to reduce the number of files it was transferring in one hit and it doesn't hang. THe problem is after doing my users folder my desktop has changed and there are a lot of things that are not how they should be.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Are you trying to restore to your user home folder while it's in use? That could be part of the problem, but usually you'll get a message about things being in use, locked, or protected.
are there hidden files in the users folder that i am not seeing?
Probably, but if you restore a folder, any hidden files should be restored, too. Mostly they're the .DS_Store files where the Finder stores the last position, size, etc., where it displayed the folder, so no big deal even if it's lost.
There are a few others at the top level of your home folder, but I think they'll be recreated as necessary.
If i transfer the whole users folder will they transfer over (even though i cannot see them)?? Is there a way to transfer those hidden files??
Why do you think there are hidden files that are causing a problem?

How do I remove a File from the Time Machine backup?

How can I delete a very large folder (30 gb) that I do not need on my time machine backup? I was transferring the file from one computer to another and TM backed it up while it was on my Macbook Pro. Now I have this massive file on my external (time machine) hard drive that I do not need.

In Finder, open the folders until you can see the folder icon for the folder you want to delete.
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How do I revert a drive from a Time Machine disk to a completely empty, unused disk?

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