HT4848 Restoring a Time Machine backup with ML OSX over a new Hard Disk

I have MacBook Pro that I had to replace the Hard Drive with a new one and it came installed with a copy of SnowLeopard OSX. Now I want to restore all my data and settings using Time Machine backup but this was made on my previous hard drive that used Mountain Lion OSX
I don't know if I have to upgrade from Snow Leopard to ML from the App Store before doing the restore or Time Machine takes care of this when I proceed with the restore task?
I will appreciate any assistance to avoid any mess
Thanks for your help.

If the time machine backup is of mountain lion, you can boot holding the option key and select the time machine drive. Then select restore from time machine backup there. No need to install any OS first.

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Help with Restoring from Time Machine Backup with new Hard Drive

Hello. Recently, my hard drive died in my 24" Early 2008 Aluminum iMac. Luckily, I had a time machine backup, and I took it upon myself to replace the 320 GB Hard Drive with a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda disk. The hardware replacement (although difficult) went fine. Now, I'm having a bit of trouble restoring the new drive from my time machine backup. The new disk shows up in Disk Utility with the correct capacity. I formatted the new drive with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using my installation disk. My only problem is that the drive isn't showing up when I am choosing which drive I want to restore my time machine backup onto. I can pick out the backup I want perfectly fine, but I can't find the new drive. Any help?

UPDATE: I restarted it (Classic IT Crowd "Have you tried turning it off and on" moment) and the drive shows up on screen. Right now, I'm waiting for it to "Calculate disk size needed for restore" and I'll keep you posted.
UPDATE 2: Currently restoring. Let's see if it's successful.
Message was edited by: funman895

Disk Repair notified me it could not repair the HD. Iam to reformat the disk and restore backed up files. OS Utilities give me a "Restore From Time Machine Backup" option. I have not reformatted the disk; does this restore option do both?

Disk Repair reported that it could not repair the HD Disk. I am to reformat the disk and restore backed up files. OSX Utilities give me a choice of restoring from time machine backup (which I have on MyPassport) but no information on reformatting the disk, which I assume I have to do first. How do I reformat the HD ...or does the restore from Time Machine do both things?

Boot OS X Recovery and use Disk Utility.
If Disk Utility reported the disk cannot be repaired though, you should replace it with a new one.

Restoring from Time Machine backup with older OS

I was having difficulties upgrading from OS X 10.5.8 to 10.6 so I decided to backup my entire system via Time Machine and then do a clean install of 10.6. The upgrade was successful, however this being a clean installation none of my files were restored. I intended to restore from the Time Machine backup but I'm hesitant to do so because the backup was with 10.5.8 and I'm not sure if I'll run into conflicts with restoring from the old OS. I'm looking to see if the community has had experience with doing this and if it is safe do so. Can I restore from the 10.5.8 backup and maintain my 10.6 OS?

i'm also curious for the answer on this one :-)

Restoring a time machine backup from an old iMac to new Mac mini

I am considering purchasing a Mac Mini. I currently have an iMac (2007) model. I would like to backup/transfer the apps from one to the other. Is this possible? I've been using the time machine function which has been backing up my iMac since day one to an external 1 TByte drive. If I can do this, what all info gets backed up? Will this also restore my e-mails and documents? I'm new to restoring on a Mac and want to avoid losing apps and having to reload everything piece meal. I appreciate any advice.
Patrick C.

Actually, you can transfer just about everything via either Target Disk mode or the Time Machine backup database. The effect would be the same. The System Installation procedure will ask you if you want to do that. Alternatively, you can launch Migration Assistant to do that. It's remarkably complete, including apps and serial numbers and passwords. A few things need to be done manually afterwards, of course, but not many.
Keep your iMac around for a few weeks in case something you need turns up later not to have been transferred.
Unrelated Note: DO NOT try to copy the Time Machine database from one drive to another. The database is composed of non-ordinary files and the procedure will take weeks.
--Gil

HT201250 My macbook pro crashed and I had to install a new hard drive. I restored from Time Machine backup all the files from my old hard drive onto my new one.

Does it really back up the whole new drive or does it only back up what's been added? It seemed like it was doing the whole thing when I tried it. I stopped it. Don't want to use up all the space on my external. Is there something else I need to do or did I mess up by not doing the migrating thing? thanks!

If you installed a new hard drive, it has nothing on it and yes TimeMachine is going to take forever to restore everything back.
I guess you'll have to erase and start over again now.
Too bad, you should have made bootable clones in addition to TimeMachine, they can restore in a hour or two depending upon content, they are also option key bootable.
TimeMachine has to go through and calculate all the files it needs to bring forward, the files are strewn all over the drive. The read heads are moving all over the platters all the time from fast sectors to slow ones, not matching what's occuring on the internal drive.
With a clone the files are defragmented and optimized, the drive reads one file, moves the heads a tiny bit and reads the next all the while transferring exactly to the internal drive, they are more in step with one another, thus it's much faster restoring from a clone than TM.
Most commonly used backup methods

HT5096 Need to move Time Machine Backups.backupdb folder from old to new USB disk! Help!

I have followed the suggestions at : Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive - Apple Support
However, these fail - If I format GUID, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), I get an error that case sensitivity must be enabled.
I have unchecked the box "Ignore ownership on this volume" as suggested, so that is not the issue.
This error DOES go away if I (ignoring the article's suggestion" format the disk as GUID, Mac OS Extended (case-sensitive, Journaled).
Then, I can initiate the copy. It will begin copying my 2.5+ Million files (1.66T) but it will begin to fail near the end (28 hrs later) with errors like "__DS_Store already exists" and "Invalid Instruction (100)" and I can't stop or complete the copy. I must unplug the USB cable, as an interrupt or eject will fail as an operation is in progress.
I would appreciate, more than anything, some command line invocation that will accomplish my task. I have tried:
"sudo cp -rP /Volumes/Source/Backups.backupdb /Volumes/Target/" both as a user, and also after a sudo su - as root. All fail, citing permission errors.
There's something special about the way the folder security "goes deeper" than unix permissions, and I can't seem to find a way to copy the stinking folder! Please help! I am looking at the tmutil command but don't see an appropriate verb action for moving a time machine directory.
Any help would be appreciated! I don't really want to "dd" the entire volume!
Thanks!
Joe

Update. I used a free control panel ("secrets") to make invisible files appear and was able to find the trash folder on the external drive. I was able to move the backup folder while holding the command key and have had two successful hourly backups. The only problem that remains now is the trash file for the external drive.
In regards to erasing it, that is not really a viable option right now because I am in the process of switching to this new 1TB drive and it has some other folders on it that I may need access to in the next few days. I installed my 500 GB (that I previously used for TM backups) into my intel iMac (5,1).
Before doing that I cloned everything from the 500 to the 1TB using carbon copy cloner. Now I'm just going back and cleaning things up. Which is why I need the ability now to not have things immediately deleted.

During upgrade to Lion on Macbook Pro the upgrade stops at OS utilites after rebooting asking to restore from time machine backup or install new copy

My Daughter is currently upgrading her MacBook Pro to OS X Lion. During the upgrade the system rebooted and then stops at the OS X Utilites menu. I have installed this same upgrade on My MacBook Pro and the family iMAC without issue. Did the upgrade encounter a problem? The only options are to Restore from Time Machine Backup, Reinstall Mac OS X, Get help, or Disk Utility.
I'm not sure how recient the backup is on the TimeMachine for her system and she is concered that she may loose a lot of updates she has made to iTunes and iPhoto.
Please help.

I have 8 GB of RAM, but would that even matter during install? Performance once installed and running sure, but I questiong whether the installer would demand that much more, or why it would affect mountain lion when restoring from a time machine backup.

I'm having a problem with logging into a FileVault-protected user account after restoring from Time Machine backup.

Hi all,
My computer had been running really slowly for a while, so I decided to erase the whole hard drive and reinstall the operating system, and then I was going to restore the files I cared about from Time Machine. The main account, which had all my documents and photos, was FileVault-protected. The last thing I did before erasing the hard drive was to run one last Time Machine backup. As far as I remember, I always ran Time Machine backups with the FileVaulted user logged in.
I don't remember whether I was using FileVault 1 or 2. I had been using FileVault 1, but I installed Lion as soon as it came out and I thought I had migrated to FileVault 2 at that point.
Once I erased the hard drive and reinstalled the operating system, I browsed the Time Machine disk and, within the Users folder, there was no folder for the main user account. When I tried to reinstall everything by restoring from Time Machine backup, I'd get the option for all the user accounts, but when I tried to log in with the main one I'd get the dreaded "You are unable to log in to the FileVault user account "User" at this time. Log in failed because an error occurred." Finally, when attempting to restore from the Time Machine backup again, I noticed something strange: After the computer got to about 10% done restoring, it declared itself completed successfully and rebooted.
I've tried a number of tips that came up from questions about similar issues on the Apple support forum, but had no luck. Is there any way to get these files back? Did they ever even get backed up?
Thanks.

Hroodbwai wrote:
I can't find it! not sure what's going on but the only folder shown is the " Shared" folder.
Did you have only the one user account? If there were others, they should also be in the "Users" folder. You probably won't have access to the files inside them, but they should be there.
From what can make out, it looks like it's not backed up any of the files for the filevault account. Can't see user folder when looking through previous backups in Time Machine galaxy view.
Are you doing that from a Finder window set to your internal HD, or your computer name? It should look something like this (with the Finder in List view):
|
|
I'd been logging out and backing up manually on a regular basis.
Scheduled backups should run normally; but they won't back up the File Vault sparse bundle, nor will any run manually.
The only time it's backed-up is when you actually log out.
You should have seen this window on logout:
|
|
followed by this one:
|
|
If you didn't see the second one, or cancelled it, the account wasn't backed-up.

Issues with restoring a Time Machine backup onto new Macbook Pro Retina

I recently got a new Macbook Pro Retina and I've been trying to restore a Time Machine backup made today from my old Macbook Pro laptop. I didn't restore from the first start up (foolishly, seemingly) simply because of the trivial reason of wanting to see the system all clean and new.
I've tried the Migration Assistant but it gets stuck on "looking for source..", despite having the ex.HD plugged in and double checking the existance of the backup itself on the ex.HD.
I've also tried booting the laptop up in the 'restore' mode (cmd R) and restoring from there but it sends me in a constant loop of 'this backup was from a previous model of laptop' or something to that affect. It also doesn't display the recent backups at all, only displaying those from the beginning of this year for some reason. All backups are in the same place on the ex.HD so its not an issue with locating the backups.
Really stuck on this one! Would really appreciate some help!
Thanks a lot, and merry Christmas

Yes, you can restore to another machine if needs be.

I cannot able able to start my macbook and then i started my mac in a recovery mode now mac os X utility window opens with 4 options 1. Restore From Time Machine Backup 2. Reinstall Mac OSX 3. Get Help Online 4. Disk Utility if i try to restore my mac wit

i cannot able able to start my macbook and then i started my mac in a recovery mode now mac os X utility window opens with 4 options 1. Restore From Time Machine Backup 2. Reinstall Mac OSX 3. Get Help Online 4. Disk Utility if i try to restore my mac with time machine no option appears if i reinstall from Mac OSX error comes and cannot able to recover from disk utility please help how can i reinstall mac OSX

Guitar21,
your MacBook Pro has booted into its Recovery mode. From the OS X Utilities menu, select Disk Utility. On the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, select your internal disk’s boot partition (typically called “Macintosh HD”). On the right-hand side, press the Verify Disk button if it’s not greyed out; if it is greyed out, or if it reports that errors were found, press the Repair Disk button. Once the verification/repair is completed, exit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu to restart in normal mode. Does it get to the login screen now?

My MacBook Pro recently shut down on me all of a sudden. When I restarted it, it popped up with a gray box with 'OS X Utilities,' then listed various options such as 1. restore from time machine backup, 2. reinstall OS X, etc. what do I do now?

My MacBook Pro recently shut down on me all of a sudden. When I restarted it, it popped up with a gray box with 'OS X Utilities,' then listed various options such as 1. restore from time machine backup, 2. reinstall OS X, 3. get help online and 4. disk utility. what do I do now? I have not backed up to Time Machine in a few days, so I'm not sure I should restore from time machine backup, is there something else I can do? Help!

Guitar21,
your MacBook Pro has booted into its Recovery mode. From the OS X Utilities menu, select Disk Utility. On the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, select your internal disk’s boot partition (typically called “Macintosh HD”). On the right-hand side, press the Verify Disk button if it’s not greyed out; if it is greyed out, or if it reports that errors were found, press the Repair Disk button. Once the verification/repair is completed, exit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu to restart in normal mode. Does it get to the login screen now?

Imac won't restore from time machine backup after HD (hard drive) recall replacement

I have an imac bought in 2011, running Snow Leopard. It required an HD replacement due to the 1 TB Seagate recall - the replacement was done by a certified Apple repair station yesterday. Before the guy left he started a backup/restore from my latest time machine backup set. It failed. I attempted it two times and got error messages that it failed and the computer needed to be restarted to try it again. No luck. I called the guy back and he told me to call Apple Care. Not thrilled about that response since the guy had just left my house I did what he told me to do. (A quick sideline here: I recognize that a time machine backup should be no big deal and SHOULD work everytime, but it doesn't. It irks me that Apple is replacing my HD through no fault of mine and yet they don't allow the restore of data to be a "covered" expense in this process - this isn't just because this was an authorized repair guy - the Apple store would have done the same).
Back to the issue. When I called apple care they pretty much had me try the same thing again with an earlier back up set. To my knowledge, it didn't work. I say this because it looked like it was working and when I came back to the imac later, it had restarted and once again booted to the OSX install. (The boot disc is still in the imac). When I tried to boot from another location, one did not show up to boot from so I assumed that the data didn't transfer and it forced another restart. So, I tried something else. I tried to re-install the snow leopard OSX without using the restore function. That appeared to work and then when the machine restarted it asked if I had another mac and I chose the option to get the files/apps/etc. from my time machine backup. The computer chose what I can only assume is the most recent backup set (It chose what I know to be a subfolder that appears under the dated backup folder - Macintosh HD--which btw is confusing seeing as that's always the name of the HD on the imac). I again stepped away from the computer so it could do its thing for two hours. When I returned, I was back to the MAC OSX screen that asks you to choose a language. There were no more options to choose DISK UTILITY or RESTORE FROM BACKUP, etc. When I clicked on English it took me right back into the screen where you say whether you have another Apple that you want to transfer data from. I realized that the imac must have restarted and I assumed maybe it was because the boot disk was still in - except how do you get the disc to eject? I also initially assumed that the backup had somehow failed again and triggered a restart. I tried to choose the option to just set up the machine without transferring data and when I got to the choose a name for your HOME folder message I tried to enter the same name I had it as before and it wouldn't allow me to do so, saying that that name was already in use. I also tried a different name and that didn't work either - got the same message (I assume if it is not the same name that it won't sync up with the time machine data from the backup set). So, I almost tried the "select time machine backup" option again until I looked at my HD space. Clearly, there is space that has been used. HD space was 997 at the start and now it's 636. My initial thought is to somehow get back into the setup area where I can use disc utility and erase the whole thing and then start over but 1) I don't think it's going to work even if I could get back there 2) I have no idea how to get this thing to reboot into that mode 3) I can't get the boot CD out to even try to restart to see if this thing did what it was supposed to, SO NOW I AM TOTALLY STUCK! I have not called Apple Care back because quite frankly they were useless the first time. I have a call into the repair guy but who knows how much help he will be. In the mean time, I have a million things to do and a computer that isn't working - Whoever said Apples never have issues needs to be seriously censored!
A few other notes: I use Time Machine Editor to run my backups weekly. It was set up that way from the get go by an Apple rep who came to my house to get us up and running. Editor should not effect the way that time machine does its work, so I doubt there is relevance but thought it worth mentioning.
One other note is that the Apple Care agent tried to have me do something called a "Source" something or other from the disk utility screen but when she realized that my backup file (shown by date) contained many other sub files (11-27-12/MacintoshHD/MyNamesIMAC/etc.), it was not possible to run this operation - thus we aborted. Sorry I don't remember the name of the process and unfortunately now can't access that option to go find it.
If you can help me, I would be eternally grateful! I am open to having a phone conversation if you are willing to give me your email to mail you my number. I have so much work to do this week and this was the last thing I needed. Did I mention this was supposed to be EASY?
I used to be quite the geek with my PC - still on the learning curve with the mac but not enjoying it. I am fairly tech savvy and I can follow instructions for a step by step solution if you've got one.

I got a recall and had the drive replaced. I have retored 3 timesa dn even had apple do the job and it is still not right. I still can't get a simple ghost of the data from time machineback tot he new drive.
This is Apple's explaination as taken from their web page.:
Restoring your entire system from a backup
If you are restoring a backup made by a Mac to the same Mac
With your backup drive connected, start up your Mac from the Recovery system (Command-R at startup) or Mac OS X v10.6 installation disc. Then use the "Restore From Time Machine Backup" utility.
Note: If "You can't restore this backup because it was created by a different model of Mac" appears when restoring a backup that was made on a different Mac, follow the onscreen instructions.
I even posted this information on the community and apple removed it... because they don't like the:
Off-topic or non-technical posts
Non-constructive rants or complaints
But here is my experieince:
Take in 27iMac running 10.6.8, 5-7 days, what a joke, my boss will be happy to pay for a week without working. Finally get, "if you have TM back up, 3 days." Get machine back with 10.6.3, hit the R recovery, click TM back up, runs for 2 hours, reboots, looks great. Box up take back to office... update to install - OH NO, still running 10.6.3. Updates crash with no specific error on install, BUG PROBELM, nothing runs.
Call Apple... after hours, tells me to boot using 10.6.2 disk, wipe, reinstall OS, udate to 10.6.8, THEN do the restore. GREAT! Only thing 10.6.2 DVD won't read... now back on phone... take back to the store, Genius says, he'll ix it just like it was. PROMISES it'll be fixed.
Pick up next day, supposedly, booted to disk, wiped drive, reinstalled, updated to 10.6.8 and THEN did the RIGHT restore... Looks GREAT... apps run and 10.6.8 OS. Back to the office... NOT RUNNING right!!!... fonts messed up, drop box app needs new install, cocktail needs upgrade, Fetch not working, memorized paths gone... back ups locked out of permissions... ***!!
4 hours on phone with apple and still no rsolution - to missing "settings". Seems there are THREE WAYS TO RESTORE (according to apply tech)... Running MIGRATE ASSISTANT and being able to choose your files, including settings, "R" RESTORE after they load a new OS... or NOW WAITING for them to send me a bootable 10.6.3 disk and then boot from disk, w/o installing OS and doing a restore from TM. I think this is done via the disk Utilties application.
So now can't back up without doing a full 400 GB back up since permissons are screwed and possibly destroying any good back ups... can't work, like having hands tied behind back. WAITING for solution! Very upset!!!
I did my first restore just like they said and now an 10 days without proper machine. Just FYI. I thnk I am going to make the store do the tech work so I have somthing to fall back on.

Can't restore latest Time Machine backup after drive replacement- only the very first.

My 13" Macbook Pro running 10.8.5 had a bad hard drive which had to be replaced. After the new drive was put in I tried to restore everything to the new drive with Time Machine but could only restore the first backup I ever did after getting the computer, which was over a year ago. I can drag and drop files but I would rather have all my preferences and bookmarks etc. How do I restore the latest backup which was only about a week ago? Thank you.

Not yet; I'm not sure if Migration Assistant is quite right. Since I posted the question I ran across this youtube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYUem-QfYBs
which suggests that I need to start up from a bootable external disc in order to restore a Time Machine backup to the same computer that the backup came from when the drive is replaced. The video actually seems to describe my issue exactly. The only confusing thing is I don't know why I would have been able to restore the very first Time Machine backup if I need to boot from an external disc. More investigation needed.

Can't restore from Time Machine backup error message

My hard drive on my Macbook failed a few days ago. Just makes a clanking noise and won't boot up etc... I installed a new drive, formatted it, and selected restore from Time Machine backup from the installer screen. It started restoring from my backup I had on an external drive and everything was fine untill it got about 6% done then get a message that says "An error occured when restoring from the backup" It is pretty non descriptive. It also says please restart your system and try again or something to that effect. I tried again, same problem. When I try to copy files over manually I eventually gets some error that says there is a problem with a file and it will quit. Any ideas on how to get my data? I can see all my files on there, but can't get them. My backup disc is just used for backup on this one machine nothing else, so it shouldn't have a problem. Help!

Good to hear MA is doing something!
>I have never had much luck with Time Machine...
Same here, not one good backup or restore, can't tell which.
You can set any of these to Clone/Update as often as you wish...
Carbon copy cloner...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/products/tribackup.html

HT4848 Restoring a Time Machine backup with ML OSX over a new Hard Disk

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