Mac won't restore from external hard drive due to lack of memory

I downloaded a clock from the app store and upon starting it my mac crashed. Everytime I turned I got a screen that said to turn it off. I eventually restored it from the internet. However I had previously backed up my harddrive using time machine and wanted to resore it from the external hard drive I used. Whenever I boot up into restore mode and go through the prompts to get to the option to restore from backup it says that my mac does not have enough memory to restore from back up and it wont let me. Can anyone please help me?

It sounds like you had a drive malfunction. The least you should do is run the Apple Hardware Test before you try to restore.
Using Apple Hardware Test

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How to full restore from external hard drive backup

I'm a new MAC user and got myself in a mess where i need to perform full backup restore from external hard drive. Last back via time machine to external drive was 2 days ago, so the data is there.
What are the MAC boot commands to get me to system restore options. And there any useful tips you can pass on.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1165784/how_to_restore_data_from_time_machine.ht ml

Restoring from external hard drive

I just replaced my hard drive on a MacBook Pro 13", and now I am trying to restore from an external hard drive. The drive is mounted, but when I run Migration Assistant, it does not see the disk drive for restoration. FYI: I did not initially use time capsule to create my back-up that I am currently trying to restore. What do I do at this point? The help is greatly appreciated!

What happened to the HDD from the MBP? Is it damaged or unusable?
Last December, my Feb'08 MBP had a catastrophic logic board failure. The HDD survived intact, hardware-wise, with minor damage that Disk Utility was able to repair after putting it in an external Firewire800 enclosure. After purchasing an Oct'11 MBP, at first start uset the Setup Assistant to migrate the entire contents of the old Mac's drive onto the new. As per recommendations from this forum, Setup Assistant does a more thorough job than the Migration Assistant you run later at will.
So, if the old drive is readable, you can try this route. Just wipe out the new drive in the MBP, reinstall the desired OS and restore from the old drive when the Setup Assistant that automatically runs at first start asks if you want to restore from another computer.

Restore from external hard drive backup

How do I restore from an external hard drive backup of my old system. How do you import into iTunes 8?

Hello,
Sorry to tap into this thread but it was the only one that made sense.
I have been trying to restore my kid's libraries from an external HD. I assumed I needed to be logged into their Windows profile to launch each of their own itunes applications. As I tried to launch with the Shift key held down, I got the appropriate request about choosing a library. But when I navigated to the HD and found their .itl file, it said it was locked or I had inadequate permissions and would not proceed.
I then logged in as myself (admin) & then dragged & dropped the files into their respective folders. When I went back to open itunes, the songlist was where it should be but nothing played when I tried them.
Is this where "consolodating" comes in and what is it and how do you do it?
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G5 won't boot from external hard drive

I have installed Leopard on my external hard drive, but have not gone through the 'setup'. I want to boot my G5 from the hd now, but when I restart holding down the option key, the internal hard drive is the only option that appears. When I do boot from the internal hd, the external hd is recognised perfectly and I can see all the files and everything - I just can't seem to boot from it. The newer iMac I used to install Leopard on the external hd will boot from it, but the G5 refuses to recognise it in the boot options.
Any help much appreciated.

No. If you boot an installer disc on an Intel Mac it will only install an Intel version of OS X. You would need to boot the installer disc on the G5 then install OS X onto your external drive. However, if you do that you will not be able to boot the Intel Mac with the external drive. The only solution to using one external drive on both computers is to partition the drive. Install OS X on one partition using the G5, and install OS X on the other partition using the Intel Mac.

Disk utility won't restore to external hard drive.

I recently installed Leopard on my Imac G5. I tried to "restore" the HD to a USB external hard drive. It said it would take 15 hours and when I came back - the time machine window was up and had a failure message as did the disk utility for the restore. Does the time machine need to be turned off to successfully restore the HD to an external hard drive?

Also worth noting that, if your drive has a FireWire interface, use that instead of USB. While the theoretical max speed of USB2 is faster than FireWire 400, in real-world conditions FW will blow the socks off USB. And if you're purchasing an external drive, it repays on the long run to pay a little more to purchase one with FW. And, of course, if FW400 is faster, FW800 is out of sight.

IMac restored from external hard drive-password wont work

I just had my iMac wiped clean and migrated my information from an external hard drive however after migrating everything to the clean machine, the password wont work and when I attempt to reset it via the apple id, it wont go through even though I have checked and rechecked that I am using the correct information.
help!

First, make sure caps lock is not on.
Another reason why your password might not be recognized is that the keyboard layout (input source) has been switched without your realizing it. At the login screen, you can cycle through the available layouts by pressing the key combination command-space or command-option-space. See this support article.
Otherwise*, boot into Recovery mode. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select
Utilities ▹ Terminal
from the menu bar. In the window that opens, type this:
res
Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:
resetpassword
Press return. A Reset Password window opens. Close the Terminal window to get it out of the way.
Select your boot volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.
Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
Follow the prompts to reset the password. It's safest to choose a password that includes only the characters a-z, A-Z, and 0-9.
Select
 ▹ Restart
from the menu bar.
You should now be able to log in with the new password, but your Keychain will be reset (empty.) If you've forgotten the Keychain password (which is ordinarily the same as your login password), there's no way to recover it.
*Note: If you've activated FileVault, this procedure doesn't apply. Follow instead these instructions.

My mac won't boot from the hard drive

Hi Everyone
Yesterday, I tried to dual boot my mac using the Bootcamp Assistant. The hard drive partitioned fine & then started the Windows setup. About half way through it found a corrupt file & cancelled the install. It went back to OSX absolutely fine & was working perfectly. I deleted the partition that had been created & then noticed that the amount of free space on my hard drive was missing the 20GB that I had partitioned off for Windows. I used OnyX to try & find the missing 20GB; it finished & then I tried to open Safari & received an error message. I tried again & received the same message so tried to restart the mac & ever since it hasn't wanted to boot using the hard drive.
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I'm hoping that someone will have an answer other than erasing my hard drive & starting again (which isn't that big a problem as I backed up all the important bits before starting any of this!)

Why did you wipe the drive?
Were you having problems?
If you were those problem may be related to a failing hard drive and that is why the TM backup could be restored.
In you topic header you say the system won't boot from the SL DVD, But it di for you to wipe the drive. Then it should again boot from the SL DVD.
Insert the DVD and reboot, hold down the Option key and select the Optical drive, SL DVD, as the Boot source.

T43: Recovery Discs are corrupt and Rescue and Recovery won't restore from the Hard Drive?

I recently created Recovery Discs in Windows XP, but when I insert Disc 2, it always says that it is the incorrect disc so I cannot continue the factory restore.
Now I'm trying to restore by booting into the Rescue and Recovery on my hard drive, but it cannot find the hidden factory partition on the hd. It also now says that the restore had a "convertion" error when it wouldn't recognize disc 2 and will not let me try to look at my hard drive to restore anymore. If I use the RR boot disc, it will let me try to restore, but it finds nothing restorable on the HD.
I did look at the hard drive and see 2 partitions with one being a IBM_SERVICE partition with 3.9GB total size and 2.9GB free space.
Please help, thanks.

Hi,
maybe somebody here could help me. i've totly lost the original partition of IBM on my T41 thinkpad. If somebody could advise me how do i get it back, i would appreciate it very much.
Thanks,
Shai

MY MAC WON'T RECOGNIZE MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

Hello. I'm the main user in my mac mini so I was trying to avoid my girlfriend from using the external drive, so looking around signed with my girlfriend user, I controled click the external HD icon in the finder and click on information, then I saw an option that I thought could give me the chance to avoid her from looking around at the external drive with her user, after several times trying to do so with my name and my password (I'm supossed to be de administrator) it kept telling me that I was not a sistem administrator. the external drive kept working but I ejected it to see if what I did would work (the other user not beeing able to see into my external HD) but my surprise is that no longer my mac recognizes the external HD. Do you have any clues on what is going on? It can be somethig with the permissions because looking at it with disk utilities it says that no owner activated neither S.M.A.R.T. Can anyone help me?
thank you
Hugo

Follow the instructions in the section of this FAQ which is relevant to your situation.
(21534)

Mac won't read my external hard drive!

I bought a lacie 500gb external harddrive at the same time as my mac bookpro, the salesmen said it was a good drive and it would work seamlessly with my computer. I open the box and the instructions are easy: connect the power adapter to the drive, then connect the drive to the computer (I chose to use the firewire400 over the usb) then wait a few seconds and it will read the drive. After waiting the "few seconds" a message popped up saying there was an error and that the disk was not properly formatted. What to do?
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Don't worry, it's not too bad.
A drive has a partition scheme and a formatting scheme. You can have a single or several partitions and there are several mehods of formatting a drive.
You can format the drive through the disc ultilty (applications/utilities). Once formatted it should show up (You can name the drive and select the format - usually mac OS Extended journaled) or FAT 32 if you want to use the drive on a windows PC also.
Some people partition a drive into 2 or more sections - with one section the same size as your internal HD for backup purposes and the rest for data. If you want to divide it up into separate discs (partitioning) you can do that from the disc utility too - just move the slider. If you are hoping to create a bootable backup on one of the partitions then make sure you use GUID as the partitioning scheme from options. Once you've moved the slider select each partition and make sure it is named and formatted.
Best of luck
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Booting from external hard drive on intel-based MacBook Pro

Good day everyone. I know similar questions were raised in this community, but I still have some questions.
I have MacBook Pro(late 2011) with OS X 10.7.5 and external hard drive with Ubuntu 13.04, from wich i can boot succefully on my PC. But MacBook Pro will not boot from my external drive, no matter which key/combination i use during restart.
After googling I found some answers to my initial question, how to boot from external hard drive
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1852633?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/faq/macbook-pro-boot-from-exte rnal-firewire-or-usb-drive.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1948
As I understand I need to format my external hard drive into GUID partition type and this will be enough to be able to boot from it on my mac?
With this new partition type, will I be able to install ubuntu again on my external drive?
Does GUID partition type supports NTFS, ext4 and FAT32, linux swap?(I use ntfs for big files, ext4 as partition for ubuntu and fat32, because i use windows, linux and osx)
Will I be able to boot from my pc from my external drive with this new partition type?
What are downsides, if any, to GPT?
here is info on my e-drive

LowLuster wrote:
The only OS that will boot from an external drive is Mac OS X or maybe Linux. For OS X to be installed on any drive it need to be formatted Mac OS Extended and have GUID partition table.
As for Linux I'm not that familiar with it but again for a Mac to boot it need an EFI partition on the drive and I don't think that is possible with NTFS or FAT32 let alone the native Linux format.
Went to wiki to learn more on efi but found artice on uefi.
Operating system loaders are a class of the UEFI applications. As such, they are stored as files on a file system that can be accessed by the firmware, called EFI System partition (ESP). Supported file systems include FAT32, FAT16 and FAT12, and supported partition table scheme is GPT only. UEFI does not rely on a boot sector, although ESP provides space for it as part of the backwards compatibility.[26]
Here is FAQ on official uefi website.
Can UEFI Secure Boot be adopted and implemented by a variety of operating systems?
UEFI specifications are platform-independent, supporting multiple platforms and architectures. In addition, UEFI specifications are designed to promote cross-functionality, as well as to support broad adoption across multiple operating systems, including Windows as well as Linux-based operating systems. The specifications are robust and can potentially complement—or even advance—other distributions, such as Linux-based distributions.
And here is wiki article on GPT expaining OS support.
It is obvious both uefi and GPT are ok with Linux and file systems such as FAT32, ext4 and NTFS.
I guess there is no much difference(or is that the same thing?) between uefi and efi used in Macs.
In your answer to Stark Industries you said that mac can boot linux from external hard drive, well this is not the info i got of official website and it is still my question, because your answer is very inconclusive and your info is partially incorrect

Restoring itunes from external hard drive

-I used WD backup program to store itunes on external hard drive
-hard drive on mac pro crashed, replaced hard drive
-trying to restore itunes songsa from external drive and when I copied songs from external hard drive to new internal hard drive which has itunes program, only song titles appear and track number for songs I ripped from CDs. All info is present for songs I purchased from itunes (why is there a difference in the way these two are restored???)
-Can I restore itunes from external drive so that artist and album are associated with each song title I ripped from CDs?
Much appreciate all assistance. Thanks.

I know MP3 and AAC save tag data, and I believe AIFF does as well (if you want to keep them in full-quality but space-greedy format). I don't think WAV supports tagging which is why they were lost. Read:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9558241&#9558241
This time make sure you have a complete backup of your itunes folder (which, in fact you may still have). That way you can recover your complete library and everything intact (as long as you keep your backups up to date).
Here is a related topic
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9267109&#9267109

Whats the best way to transfer everything from my old macbook pro to a new mac mini, i have a external hard drive which i backup to regularly via time capsule

whats the best way to transfer everything from my old macbook pro to a new mac mini, i have a external hard drive which i backup to regularly via time capsule

Check out > OS X Lion: How to use Migration Assistant to transfer files from another Mac

I able to copy and paste files from external hard drive to mac, but not the other way around. Please suggest. Thanks

I m able to copy and paste selected files from external hard drive to my mac but not the other way around. Im not able to copy files from Mac to external hard drive.
The same is working fine with USB flash memory.
Please help.

Vijay Raymond Daniel wrote:
The only thing is we need to buy this software. if there is a free solution to inter change files between NTFS and HFS it would be better,
Don't use NTFS, remove your data off it first and change the format to something the Mac and PC can read, but doens't cost money or require software.
Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's

Mac won't restore from external hard drive due to lack of memory

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