Mac OS X installer crashes while restoring system

Question

After several restarts to try correcting an unrelated problem (vertical gray lines on screen), my hard drive failed. I'm guessing it was in a fragile state and the restarts put it over the edge. Anyway, no problem, I had a Time Machine backup from a half hour earlier. I followed the instructions to boot from a system CD and restore my system from the last backup.
However, about a half hour into the estimated 9 hour process (230 GB of data), the installer stopped and displayed a crash log. I repeated twice and it failed at the same spot each time. Here's the first few lines of the crash log; I can post the rest if that helps:
Aug 3 19:57:45 localhost OSInstaller[154]: [RESTORE] Error -36 while restoring /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Kiva/2010-08-03-143656/Kiva/Applications/iApps/iMovie 3.app/Contents/Resources/sv.lproj/iMovie Help/gfx/blt.gif to (null)
Aug 3 20:04:50 localhost OSInstaller[154]: [RESTORE] 8: restoring Developer
Aug 3 20:04:50 localhost OSInstaller[154]: from source path: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Kiva/2010-08-03-143656/Kiva/Developer
Aug 3 20:04:50 localhost OSInstaller[154]: to destination path: /Volumes/Kiva
Aug 3 20:05:40 localhost LCA[89]: Child exited with status 11
Next, I just installed a new OS from the CD, then tried using Migration Assistant to restore my Time Machine data, but Migration Assistant couldn't see my backup, either when connected directly to the machine via USB or wirelessly via my Airport.
Next, I tried connecting my backup to another computer, thinking I might be able to open the folder and restore it to my main computer using different backup software (Sync Pro X), but I couldn't open the backup .sparsebundle due to permissions errors (even when I changed its permissions to 777 from Terminal).
I finally gave up on Time Machine and restored my computer from an older Sync Pro X backup, then manually restored some important files from the newer Time Machine backup. But I wasted a whole evening on Time Machine. My question is: is there anything I can do to make Time Machine work in the future? Or should I just not even bother relying on that, and go straight to my Sync Pro X backup first? That would be a disappointment because those hourly backups sure are appealing, but hey, at least I didn't put all my reliance on that Time Machine backup.

Answer 1

Most likely, whatever was going wrong with your system corrupted some things, including the ones listed. Time Machine detected those changes and backed them up, so when you went to restore from your last backup, the installer choked on the corrupted files.
Sometimes you can repair the backups with Disk Utility.
If not, or if that doesn't help, you can usually choose an earlier backup and restore it successfully.
That would also explain why Migration Assistant didn't see the backups; it always uses the most recent backup -- you don't get a choice.
But I've learned over the years (mostly the hard way, of course ), never to trust my backups to a single app or piece of hardware: no app is perfect, and all hardware fails, sooner or later.
Like many here, I keep full Time Machine backups, plus a "bootable clone" on a separate external HD. I use CarbonCopyCloner, many use the similar SuperDuper. That gives me the best of both types of backups, plus of course a completely separate, independent backup.