How I can reinstall OSX 10.8 with applications only? i.e No system preferences and library files from time machine

Hi there,
I would like to clean install mac os x, but I want to keep all my applications (such as photos and music from itunes etc) from a time machine backup. I am having some issues with my widgets and sleep mode, of which I have searched high and low for answers. My only resolve now is the re-install mac os, but Im afraid 4 years of use have resulted in a mess in terms of prefrence lists and everything. Is it possible to exclude the library from time machine and then reinstall mac os, with a new library, but keeping all my apps, so that in effect, it runs like new, but with all my apps?
Any help is much appreciated.

You can exclude the Library if you don't transfer your user files, so copy your user files manually to another external disk if you don't want to lose them. You can keep your applications without any problem
To restore the Time Machine backup, follow these steps:
1. Press Command and R keys while your Mac is starting, and open Disk Utility.
2. Select Macintosh HD on the sidebar, go to Erase tab and erase the disk.
3. Close Disk Utility, select the option to restore a Time Machine backup and follow the steps. When it asks you for what you want to restore, select only your applications. After restoring the backup, copy your user files back to the hard drive

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How to remove old backup files from time machine? Lion OSx

Hi everyone,
I am just wondering how to efficiently and safely remove the old backup files from time machine? I tried once with command, but it damaged my extra-disk... Does Lion OSx have fixed that?
Many thanks
Hong

Blue-
Time Machine will automatically delete back-ups as the need for space arises. If you want to delete a certain file (application, document, whatever) and have it gone for good you can do that as well.
The best place on the web for information about Time Machine is...
http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
...it covers everything!
Clinton

I can't restore 'library' with support files from Time Machine

backup - I can't restore 'library' with support files from Time Machine - Ask Different
Due to an accident, my entire applications folder with all the support files, including plists and caches got deleted.
I tried restoring by files from the most recent Time Machine backups but I cannot retrieve my applications with the support files.
I even tried it with migration assistant on a new image.
Is this impossible?
Must I start from scratch?
Details of the ‘accident’
I was using this app called ‘AppCleaner’ that also automatically deletes related support files which are normally left behind if one simply trashes an Application.
In the search view, I typed the app name and I selected all the apps in the results using Command + A. Unfortunately, this selected every single Application in the Applications Folder in the background and I trashed and deleted all files.
Anyway.
I tried to restore the applications and library from my Time Machine Back-ups but failed to do so because I didn’t have enough space to restore. (I have a 11inch Macbook Air 2012 64GB SSD
When I tried to restart in recovery mode, I had the same problem, I was disallowed the option to restore using my time capsule backups because my SSD didn’t have enough space for the backup.
I then tried to restore it to a totally different but new image on a 64GB USB3.0 Sandisk USB Stick, but the process stopped after hours of being stuck around 30.4 percent and the computer was unable to boot, leaving me with a persistent verbose message suggesting it couldn’t identify the os, kernel or anything.
I finally tried restoring the state using migration assistant on the very same SSD that had my files missing. This happened successfully and I have all my applications in the applications folder.
But now I have 13GB free (I had 2GB before) and all my application support files, saved states, preferences, caches and customizations are gone.
Basically, it feels like I just got a new macbook with my documents and itunes folder loaded on to it.
How can I get my apps back to the pre-deletion state or is this impossible? Do I have to start from scratch? I thought my Time Machine Backups would restore it to exactly the same state, am I wrong?
Screenshots:
Message was edited by: Arsenenger

Can you simply navigate to your Time Machine backup with the Finder? Treat it like an external hardrive and just look for your old Applications folder. /Applications/
Also, quite a few apps put config and support files in ~/Library/Application\ Support/
So you may be able to get the files from there as well.

How can I delete undesirable backup files from time machine?

Can anyone give me details of how to delete undesirable backup files from Time Machine,
I'm trying to remove mackeeper which has been running since 2011
And I'm stuck at the first hurdle......
Thanks

The problem I have is that i dont have an option to delete backups of this file on the options menu, and when I click delit or try to drag it to the trash I get a box saying " This operation can't be completed because backup items can't be modified"
Iam really tempted to just delete mackeeper from HD library and Applications but it is stressed that I need to do the TM deletes first?
Am stuck please help

Can't restore files from Time machine backup?

I kinda successfully restored my files from Time Machine after a clean re-install of Snow Leopard (Time Machine thought they were new files, though, so backed up the 26 GB... waste of space), but now I'm trying to restore the files of the other user on the computer. In her pictures folder, I can't copy the iPhoto Library because I don't have permission to access it! The same problem occurred on my account too, but I was able to go to my Time Machine drive and manually change the permissions for the files I wanted, which doesn't work on her account.
I have made a Youtube video of the error:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1__PdyAetVg
Can anyone assist me in restoring the files? That's all I need help in. Thanks

wrongusername wrote:
But if I transfer everything with the Setup Assistant, won't I once again be experiencing the problems I had?
If the problems were caused by your data. But that's extremely unlikely. It may have been an app, or, much more likely from your description, something corrupted in the Leopard OS. That's one of the problems with upgrading a sick system without knowing what or where the causes are. It's a bit like a brain surgeon operating on himself: if he isn't in tip-top shape to start with, his condition is likely to change, and not for the better.
Most of us would have recommended first simply doing a +*Repair Disk+* on your internal HD; if that didn't help, installing the "combo" Leopard update; if that didn't work, doing an +Archive and Install+ and re-installing the "combo."
After a clean re-install of Snow Leopard, my Mac worked fine again (except for the TM trouble). So it probably had something to do with my old files.
Probably not. Much more likely OSX was somehow damaged. And you got a whole new one.
How come I could read the files on my external HD and yet not be able to copy the files?
Time Machine uses special "deny everybody everything" permissions on it's backups, among other things, in an attempt to keep us mere mortals from moving, changing, or deleting things and corrupting them.

How to restore files from Time Machine after Clean Install of Mavericks

How to restore files from Time Machine after Clean Install of Mavericks. I know the data is there but seems unaccessable because I may have changed the Computer or Owner name. Is there any way to fix that now?

Hi Linc,
my back-up data is managed by Time Machine; the actual data is on a second internal Hard Drive with a capacity of 1TB - not partitioned. I am using Time Machine and have access to all data backed up since Mavericks Clean Install but not the data prior to this date.
When I open the 1TB drive in Finder I can see a folder "Backups.backupdb/Sigi's Mac Pro/ followed by many folders of backup dates going back to 2010-09-20-103441 and up to 2014-02-07-142414 all followed with folder Macintosh HD. February 7th 2014 was the date of the clean install.
These Backups are followed by backup date folder 2014-02-08-075554 with a subfolder of MacPro-320GB (this is the name I assigned to my Boot Drive during formatting; I suspect I should have assigned the same name as before ie. Macintosh HD) and 2014-02-11 with a subfolder Macintosh HD, these are the ones I get access to by way of Time Machine > Restore.
Weird thing is on Febr 11 when I relised my possible mistake and renamed the Bootdrive back to what it was initially ie. Macintosh HD despite this I have access to all backup data since the Clean Install in both folders MacPro-320GB as well as Macintosh HD but not to any data prior to the Clean Install.
Is there something that Time Machine knows and prevents access or is it simply a matter of renaming the subfolder 2014-02-08-07554/MacPro-320GB to ........./Macintosh HD?
I like to restore selectively and not everything - It was hard work reinstalling apps that were supposed to be the troublemakers (ref my discussion on Maverick problems) but I now need to get onto data specific to some of these apps as well as other data I may have missed. Long story? Yes and sorry.
Sigi

How do you delete file from time machine back up?

How do you delete file from time machine back up?

This from Apple KB Article If Time Machine is not in your Dock, you can enter Time Machine from the Menu Bar or System Preferences.
Deleting data from a Time Machine backup
To delete all backups of one or more items from a Time Machine backup, follow these steps:
Click the Time Machine icon on your Dock to enter the Time Machine restore interface.
Click on the item you would like to delete. Command-click to select multiple items.
Control-click (or right click) the highlighted item(s) and select "Delete All Backups of..." from the contextual menu, or select "Delete all backups of..." from the Action Item menu.
Authenticate with an administrator password when prompted.

I upgraded my macbookpro hard drive to 1 TB then migrated my files from time machine. I'm now locked out of the computer because the password is not the same as my usual one and one that was years old and not retreivable. How do I work around this?

I upgraded my macbookpro hard drive to 1 TB then migrated my files from time machine. I'm now locked out of the computer because the password is not the same as my usual one and one that was years old and not retreivable. How do I work around this?

Whether or not you are able to recover the data off the drive yourself will depend on if the drive suffered any impact damage in the crash. You can buy USB SATA or IDE adapters (Intel and almost all G5 use SATA) that will let you connect your hard drive to a computer (like a flash drive) to see if you can recover the data. If the drive has suffered physical damage if may not mount.
If you know someone who has one of these adapters you could try using theirs, otherwise you could buy one but you take the risk of the data on the drive being non recoverable. Regardless, both are much cheaper than $1699!
(Alternatively, if you know of someone with a Mac Pro or PowerMac G5 they may be able to install the drive in their machine and try to boot from or mount it and copy the data off.)

How do you retrieve individual files from Time Machine?

If a file original is lost or becomes corrupted, is there anyway to retrieve that individual files from Time Machine? If so, how?

ElRay (Amazingly, not the 1st) wrote:
SharonZ wrote:
Time Machine finds that file, and not other files that meet the criteria. BUT...
That's not what TM was doing. My search criteria was "by filename", however when I try to go backwards in TM, that limit is lost and it appears to be returning every file in the rolled-up weekly archive. This is especially odd, because I have since determined that the file was actually corrupted before TM was running, so there should be only one version of the file in TM's archives.
No, it was a file sitting on my disk. Email was mentioned, because the fact that every email in every junk folder appears as a separate item to be restored, which is what triggers that little "too many files to show you at one time" issue.
So your name search returned lots of junk mail items. I shudder to think what the file name was that you were searching for! <g>
Also: you can tell Time Machine to ignore your junk mail if you've filtered the junk mail in Mail into a different folder/box.
I figured that one out. I had used Spotlight to find the junk mailboxes, but couldn't, only the messages "labeled" junk. I had to use 'find' in Terminal.app to actually find Mail's junk & spam folders.
Yeah, it's hard to find stuff when you don't know where it is <g>. In general, though, for these kinds of things, always think: "Library" which is where SO many pieces of programs are stored. Of course, there's lots of Library folders, so your first job is to decide: system or user level? Realizing more than one user account could have email setups, you can assume the path you need starts at the User level. So, you start at Home[UserName]/Library. Scanning that Library folder, you see a Mail folder (aha!). Checking out that folder, you might first suspect the Mailboxes subfolder, but you'll soon see that it has the mailboxes you've defined for sorting your mail; so, you continue to scan the Mail folder and you see a folder with your email address on it (or multiple folders, one for each of your emails). Open one of those and, ta da! You see something labeled junk.mbox.
You've already found your Junk mail, of course, but I'm suggesting this as a general approach, especially for other readers of this thread, who might not want to touch Terminal.
But, back to one of your initial problems: TM seemed to lose your search criteria. Do you think it was related to the high number of " hits"? Does it work for you otherwise, when you search for something less general?

HT1553 I want to do a clean install of Mountain Lion. Can I do this without a DVD version of the OS, and can I restore only specific things like iPhoto and iTunes libraries from Time Machine backup.

I want to do a clean install of Mountain Lion. Can I do this without a DVD version of the OS, and can I restore only specific things like iPhoto and iTunes libraries from Time Machine backup.

Mountain Lion is only available as a download, so there is no DVD to purchase. What you can do is download ML and then stop it from installing as soon as it's on your drive. From there you can make your own bootable ML flash drive.
When your purchase and download Mountain Lion, it will end up in the Applications folder and automatically want to install. Press Command+Q to stop the install and exit. The installer will remain on the hard drive.
1) Right click on the installer and choose "Show Package Contents".
2) A folder will open on the desktop. Drill down to Contents > SharedSupport and double click the disk image InstallESD.dmg to mount it on the desktop.
3) From here you can either burn a DVD, or copy the contents to a flash drive. Personally, I would strongly suggest using an 8 GB flash drive formatted as Mac OS Extended. You will be able to boot to it in about 30 seconds instead of at least 10 minutes off of a DVD, and it will install MUCH faster. Make sure the flash drive is empty, or you've copied anything off it it you need as it will need to be erased.
4) Don't just drag and drop the contents you see in the open disk image to the flash drive. It won't boot that way as it will be missing some hidden files. Open Disk Utility. You will something similar to this:
5) To accomplish the above, highlight either the flash drive's single partition (as I did), or the item at the bottom (Mac OS X Install ESD), which is what you will see with the Lion disk image mounted. It doesn't matter which one you pick. You'll then have the option to select the Restore tab towards the upper right. Drag and drop from the left column into the Source and Destination fields as shown above. If you've already erased the flash drive, you can uncheck the box. Click the Restore button.
You've just made your own bootable Mountain Lion USB Flash drive installer. Once you boot to the flash drive, run Disk Utility first to erase the drive you want Mountain Lion on, then continue with the install.
As far as restoring your iPhone and iTunes libraries, I couldn't tell you. So I wouldn't do any of the above until someone else chimes in with a way to do that after a clean install of ML.

HT1277 Mail has gone crazy. Header's and messages are mixed up. New Mac Book Pro. Migrated files from Time machine running snow leopard. Reinstall or new computer needed?

Mail has gone crazy. Header's and messages are mixed up. New Mac Book Pro. Migrated files from Time machine running snow leopard. Reinstall or new computer needed?

Ok; I'm not sure what you're doing. 36 hours is rather long. Seems like a new migration. Not what I intended.
Here's what I intended: from the newly-migrated and apparently-corrupt environment, create a new user, not related to any existing user, nor any migration-created user, or any other user for that matter. That is, use  > System Preferences > Users and Groups, authenticate yourself by clicking on the padlock, and then click the + and create a wholly new user. Then log in under that user and establish the mail access.
36 hours? I'm wondering if there's an error or an exceedingly slow network here? Or a really, really slow disk? Or a sick backup? (WiFi isn't the path I'd usually choose, either.)
Failing the attempted second migration, I'd try a different tactic. Does your existing (old) system work? If so, I'd bypass the backup and connect an external (scratch) USB disk drive to the (old) sstem and then boot and use Disk Utility booted from the installer DVD disk or boot and use Disk Utility from the recovery partition or booted from a recovery partition created on some other external storage (details here vary by the OS X version and what hardware you have), and perform a full-disk backup of your original internal disk to (scratch) external storage. (Make sure you get the source and target disks chosen correctly here; copying the wrong way — from the scratch disk to your existing disk — will clobber your data!) In esssence, this will clone your existing boot disk. Then dismount the (formerly-scratch) external disk, transfer it over to the new system, and use it as the source of the migration, by performing a fresh OS X installation on the new system.
Target Disk Mode is also sometimes an option for accessing the disk for a migration, but that requires the right cable, and requires systems that have the same external connection; newer MacBook Pro systems use Thunderbolt for this, and older systems tend to use FireWire. And I'm guessing you don't have compatible hardware.
The details here can and do vary by your OS X versions and your particular Mac systems — if you'll identify the specific models and hardware, somebody might be able to better tailor the above (fairly generic) sequence to your particular configuration.

HT201250 Can I restore photo files from Time Machine without the use of an external drive? I'm trying to restore lost photo files and I see them listed in Time Machine (without use of an external drive), but when I try to restore I get a error code 36.

Can I restore photo files from Time Machine without the use of an external drive? While I was transferring photos back and forth from a thumb drive something went haywire and my IPhoto was wiped clean! When I click on Time Machine I see all the dated pages (without an external storage drive connected), go back to a date where all my photo files are there, click "restore", and I get the message: "The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in file cant be read or written (error code - 36)"

Thanks so much Terence. I tried some of the fixes from that page, but then discovered the suggestion to compress the Time Machine Back up of the original library and transfer it as a zip back to my computer as detailed here:
http://pondini.org/TM/E9.html
That worked like a charm. I really appreciate it.

How do I restore files from time machine backups made before reformatting macbook air?

How do I restore files from time machine backups made before reformatting macbook air?

The section titled "Restoring data from Time Machine backups" in the following may help: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

How can you restore your backup files from time machine?

Hi how can you restore your backup files on your mac book pro from time machine? i lost all my pic and files on my phone and then restored it from the last back up which was when i lost all my files i dont know what i did? someone please help!
Thank You
Jon

YOu might get more info if you post in the MAC forum.

Problem with Read-only user being able to add and delete files and folders.

The setup:
Computer #1
iMac (intel) running 10.5.5
File sharing ON
Sharing folder on external USB drive called 'iTunes' (but not the drive volume itself)
Users:
- Everyone = Read Only
- Admin(me) = Read/write
- UserA = Read Only (with account PW and username identical to local login for computer below)
Computer #2
UserA's iBook G4 running 10.4.11
When I go to finder>network>iMac>connect it prompts me to login which I do and then select 'iTunes' folder which is visible and mounts successfully. I can see all files, access them all. Life seems great. Then I discover that I can also modify and delete files from the iBook, and create and delete directories.
I'm new to networking and although I've setup and managed minimal networking tasks on PCs before, this is my first foray into the Mac networking world. Please help.
What am I doing wrong? What haven't I set?
Thanks in advance.

Sorry, I should have clarified this in the first email.
When I login from the iBook, I am logging in under a read-only user (not as myself, who is admin on the iMac). The user on the iBook has only been given read-only permissions on the iMac yet is able to add and delete files.
This read-only login/PW however, is the admin account on the iBook, but that shouldn't allow this person to write on the iMac so far as I understand things...right?

How I can reinstall OSX 10.8 with applications only? i.e No system preferences and library files from time machine

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