How to restore from Time Capsule to bare hard drive

This is more for information, than a question, but I really hope that it helps someone else out facing the same challenge.
Scenario:
1 complete recent backup on Time Capsule
2 failed hard drive on Mac
3 no startup or OS disk
[My teenage daughter was distraught, as her much loved and much abused MacBook Pro died completely on a college tour; quick diagnosis confirmed that the hard drive was completely toast. And with it, she believed, all of her work this summer on her college applications.
That was the bad news. Now for the good news. Unbeknownst to her, I had configured her machine to automatically backup to the Time Capsule on the home network.
Now the problem. We just moved home. No OS disks. No install disks. And I discovered that she hadn't told me that the optical disk drive was also toast. So no way to get a disk in, in any case.
So I have a backup, and a new hard drive to go into the dead Mac, and (fortunately) a good Mac (actually several). But all of the guides assume that you have some way to get the zombie Mac to boot.]
Solution:
1 figure out spec for new hard drive, find one, buy it and install new hard drive in dead Mac (making it a zombie Mac - it moves but it has no real brains) http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/0/MA161/en_US/MacBook_13inch_HardDrive_DIY .pdf and http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2010+Hard+Drive+Repl acement/4305/1
2 mount hard drive as FireWire disk in Target mode by using ⌘T to any good Mac
3 download Carbon Copy Cloner http://www.bombich.com/
4 start the process of cloning, which involves creating a (hidden) Recovery HD partition http://help.bombich.com/kb/advanced-strategies/the-disk-center#recovery_hd
5 do NOT proceed to clone the 'good Mac', ejecting the formerly dead Mac, which was a zombie Mac, and now has a brain again, and shut it down
6 connect the now undead Mac to the Time Capsule
7 boot the now undead Mac, and restore as usual from the Time Capsule http://pondini.org/TM/14.html
[... and thereby obtain many many good father points]

Read Q14-18 in Pondini.. the grand poohbah of Time Machine.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

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Trying to restore from time capsule to nes hard drive, keeps looking for disks ! Can you help

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The very best way to do this is with ethernet to the existing router. Put the TC in bridge mode manually.
Then plug it in to existing router.. we recommend LAN router to WAN on the TC but even that is not 100% necessary.
If you want to link by wireless, to a non-apple router that is bad.. recommend strongly against it. Join a wireless network is super slow.
If you have a desktop Mac you can plug it directly into the Mac by ethernet.
But we need to know how the Mac is connected to internet.
I have given some info on one layout here.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4817218?tstart=30
If you end up relying on an old TC. And any of the models from Gen1-3.. and increasingly Gen4 have all reached EOL.. they can die suddenly and either take your files with them or be hard to recover. Also a TC is slow cf a USB external drive even, which is more reliable. Considering a 2TB is <$100 I would be careful using an old TC simply because you got it free.

HT201250 How to restore laptop from time capsule after replacing hard drive

How do I reload all my programs and files from a time capsule after changing hard drive? Also Apple store reloaded with Snow Leopard and not Lion. Will that be a problem? Thank you

Plug the external drive into a computer by usb or whatever box you have available..
When you say blank, is it correctly formatted.. we recommend HFS+ which is Mac OS Extended (jorrnaled)
Make sure you use GUID type disk setup not MBR if it came from PC world.
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How to restore from Time Machine onto an external drive

Hi all,
I am a backup freak, and I don't feel entirely safe with Time Machine taking care of backing up my system unless I can test every now and then that I would be able to do a full restore. I've had problems in the past with .Mac/MobileMe's Backup.app, which would not be able to restore from an otherwise apparently successful backup, for one reason or another.
So, is there a way to test a full restore from Time Machine onto an external hard drive?
Thanks for your advice

Allamistakeo wrote:
Hi all,
I am a backup freak, and I don't feel entirely safe with Time Machine taking care of backing up my system unless I can test every now and then that I would be able to do a full restore. I've had problems in the past with .Mac/MobileMe's Backup.app, which would not be able to restore from an otherwise apparently successful backup, for one reason or another.
So, is there a way to test a full restore from Time Machine onto an external hard drive?
of course. connect an external, boot from the snow leopard DVD and choose "restore system from backup" from the utilities menu. follow the instructions and choose the external drive as the restore destination. make sure it's properly formatted. it should be formatted mac os extended with GUID partition scheme.
also, you might want to consider doing secondary backups in addition to TM by making a bootable clone on another external drive. use CCCloner or Superduper for such backups.
Thanks for your advice

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

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

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

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...

Safari history - how to restore from Time Capsule?

Background...
I couldn't open Safari today (beachballing with no window opening whatsoever), presumed the "com.apple.Safari.plist" file was corrupted so deleted it from "~/Library/Preferences", and restored a copy using Time Machine from my Time Capsule from yesterday before I had the issue. Safari settings from yesterday restored and working.
However...
My Safari History going back 2 years has deleted to just one month ago! How can I restore these from a previous Time Capsule backup? Is it just "History.plist" file from "~/Library/Safari" that needs to be restored, or also the one titled "HistoryIndex.sk" in the same location, and/or any others?
Also, do I need to restart machine after restoring all files needed, or should the history show immediately after just relaunching Safari?
Note: I tried doing the "History.plist" one only, yet still just get the one month of history showing. This is really urgent as I have sites in my 2 year browsing history I need to get to again!
Help very very gratefully received :-\

jimthing wrote:
Though I am still finding that with circa 2 years worth of history, they may be starting to delete from the back-end after a while; so I presume there may be a theoretical max amount of sites and/or dates Safari will keep in there regardless of setting "Manually" for history deletion.
I doubt there's a maximum size specific to the History plist, but that (or corruption of it) would be the only limitation. And yes, plists do get corrupted with some frequency.
And I don't know, either, what would happen if the plist got to a maximum; whether you'd get a message, or it would drop the oldest entries.
That must be a huge+ file after 2 years! It's a bit surprising that it hasn't gotten corrupted before.
If your browsing history is that important, I'd suggest finding some other way to keep it that long, such as bookmarking the critical sites. That would take much less room (and be less subject to corruption) than the history of every site you've ever visited, every time.
And/or, there might be a 3rd-party app that would help. I don't know of any, but it might be worthwhile to look for one.

How to restore from time capsule

I need to check an external drive (time capsule) for recent backups. How do I do this?

Read Q14-18 in Pondini.. the grand poohbah of Time Machine.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Restoring from Time Machine after 1T hard drive replacement

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Now, when I have tried to use the restore start up, the computer recognizes that my drive is connected, but says there are no files on that drive it can use to restore the system.
I can see that there are 50GB on the disk, and when I look in it, there are files called "Macintosh HD" so that makes me think that my stuff is in fact on my external drive. why can't my computer see it?
Do I need to get a FireWire cord to connect to my computer? I'm using the USB 3.0 that came with the hard drive.
My computer had Mountain Lion when I backed it up. I think it is back to whatever OS it came with originally. Do I need to update to Mountain Lion? If I do, how do I do so without having to pay for it again? My app store is empty since my computer was wiped.
Thanks for the help, I really need it!

The first thing to do is upgrade back to ML, which you can easily do. Just redownload ML from the app store with the same AppleID you used the previous time you purchased the ML upgrade. Your purchase is tied to the AppleID you used when buying, so you can download it again (as many times as you wish) without payment as long as you use the same AppleID.
Once you have upgrade it to ML, then try the restore from the backup (which I gather was made when while running ML before).

Restore from time machine on clean hard drive

I want to change my current hard drive to a SSD hard drive. Unfortunately i lost the DVD that came with the Mac, so my question is whether i can do a complete restore from the time machine backup? Does it include all the iOs file and everything?

You will need the Install DVD that shipped with your Mac...
Contact AppleCare and for a small Handling fee they will send you the Appropriate disc.
Contacting Apple World Wide for Support and Service
http://support.apple.com/kb/HE57
Apple Contact USA
http://www.apple.com/contact/

After full restore from Time machine, my TM hard drive won;t mount

I got my macbook pro back from a logic board repair and restored it fully from Time Machine using my leopard install disc.
Took a while, but it has installed OK. But some applications weren't restored and now the Time Machine drive won't mount on the Macbook at all. When I open up time machine - and try to choose a backup disc nothing comes up.
The drive shows up on a PC when i connect it (but won;t read it as its mac formatted) so I'm pretty sure there;s nothing wrong with the drive.

Also, be aware that TM thinks you got a new Mac, not a new logic board. Thus you won't see your TM backups in the normal way. You'll need the (badly named) +*Browse Other Time Machine Disks+* option (see #E2 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum).
In addition, when you start doing new backups, TM will start a whole new "sequence," as if it were a different Mac. See #C8 in the Troubleshooting Tip for options.

Full Restore from Time Capsule after hard drive failure

Authorized agent replaced hard drive after it failed. Installed 10.5.5 and currently attempting to do a full restore from Time Capsule - progress is slow and in question after 22 hours. The backup size approx. 100 gb.
Screen reads "Transferring Information" at the top, progress bar is moving, and bottom of the screen reads "Looking for applications and documents to transfer" and hasn't changed for 22 hours.
Is this normal? how long should 100 gb take to restore?

think about the speed of wifi here
speed at 802.11n = a theoretical 540Mbps (less in real world scenarios)
Mbps = Mega bits per second
MBps - Mega bytes per second
8 bits = 1 byte
8 mega bits = 1 mega byte
How long would it take you to download a 1 gig file from the internet wired into your modem? About 10-20 min? And that is taking into account that the info is being uploaded hardwire. Now imagine that same file over wireless in your home being upload by the Airport card in your computer. People over look upload speed when considering these things. The wireless upload speed of your Airport card is what is limiting this. Just a limitation of the technology, not a fault of Apple just stating the numbers here.

Restore from Time Capsule after Hard Drive Crash

The HD on my iMac crashed Christmas Day. I have been running backups on Time Machine to a Time Capsule since I purchased the iMac (and also backing up a MacBook Air), but never had any occasion to see if it worked.
I yesterday got the computer back with a new HD installed. When I tried to do the restore from Time Capsule from the Setup Assistant which ran on start up, I could not get past the initial screen. It kept hanging up on "Opening Time Capsule," and then on one occasion it found only the MacBook Air back up volume.
After some research here, I tried running the utility after booting from my Snow Leopard disk. This time, it immediately found the backups from both computers, but hung up on opening the iMac backup.
After more research, I ran the disk utility and repaired the HD on the iMac. It finally worked -- I woke up to a "Restore Complete" message (it started around 10:00 pm last night). The iMac started up without a hitch to the way it looked Christmas morning. The only problem I have noticed is that my most recent events in iPhoto are empty. The thumbnails are there, but no pictures. I tried to rebuild the library using iPhoto Library Manager, but no luck. Any ideas?
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think about the speed of wifi here
speed at 802.11n = a theoretical 540Mbps (less in real world scenarios)
Mbps = Mega bits per second
MBps - Mega bytes per second
8 bits = 1 byte
8 mega bits = 1 mega byte
How long would it take you to download a 1 gig file from the internet wired into your modem? About 10-20 min? And that is taking into account that the info is being uploaded hardwire. Now imagine that same file over wireless in your home being upload by the Airport card in your computer. People over look upload speed when considering these things. The wireless upload speed of your Airport card is what is limiting this. Just a limitation of the technology, not a fault of Apple just stating the numbers here.

Restore from Time Capsule problem

I had to restore my system from my Time Capsule but it is not working.
Help needed.
Macbook Pro 15/2.2GHz/2x1G/160GB/SD/MDM
Installed OS X 10.6.7 update 5/7/11 but after that many apps started to crash on launch.
Attempoed restore from Time Capsule using a Time Machine backup from prior to the update so as to rollback the OS to 10.6.6.
The restore failed (screen never got beyond the Apple Screen and the spinning gear aftewr waiting six hours).
So I wiped the harddrive with a high degree of security and then repeated the restore with an even older version of 10.6.6 but the screen still hangs at the Apple screen with the spinning gear.
I will leave it to run over night to see what happens, but I suspect it will still be this way in the morning.
What do I do next?
The drive was checked out as OK by Disk Utility First Aid. Is there another utility I should use to check the laptop HD?
Steven Locke

You can erase & install the system again, and when finished migrate your data within the setup assistant from the backup volume. With this method the system files are installed fresh from disc and not transferred from the backup.

After trying to restore from time capsule, I get the following message when I try to access the folder "data." The folder "Data" can't be opened because you don't have permission to see its contents. Any ideas?

after trying to restore from time capsule, I get the following message when I try to access the folder "data": "The folder “Data” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents." Any ideas?

Are you restoring from a TM backup??
Check the methods Pondini outlines to do restore.
Q14-17
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

How to restore from Time Capsule to bare hard drive

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