New Mac, restore from Time Machine

My MacBookPro crashed today- hardware problem and in the process corrupted my email folder- not sure how or why. I bought a new machine and when I restored from Time Machine back-up, discovered that the most recent back-up had the corrupted mail file. Is there any way to go back in time, on a new machine, using a back-up from a different one. In other words, I want to restore from a Time Machine state that is 5 hours previous to the most recent back-up. Hope this makes sense.

yes, you can do it but if you need only Mail then it's simplest to restore just your Mail data rather than reinstalling everything which will take a while.
quit Mail. control-click on TM in the dock and choose "browse other TM disks". scroll back to the time you need and navigate to /Users/username/Library
restore the file /Users/username/Library/preferences/com.apple.mail.plist and the directory /users/username/library/mail to the corresponding locations on your new hard drive (delete the existing items first). start Mail. it will say it needs to import your messages. this actually means reindex. let it do so and you should be back to normal after it's done reindexing.

Similar Messages

Mayor Problems with new installation / restoring from time machine

I encountered several problems while setting up my mac mini, 1,66 Ghz, 60 GB from the start. The following problems occured:
1.) Installing 10.6 upon existing 10.6.4 caused scanner driver to fail. I was unable to reinstall it, so i decided to reinstall 10.6. from the start
2.) clean install of 10.6., after finishing i could not install iWorks. There was an error like "com.apple.installer.pagecontroller" ant installation terminated. With MS Office 2004 I had a problem, too: An error with _ds.store occured, I could not even copy the files to my harddisk. I thought, it might be the optical drive, so i took an external one which caused the same problems. I proceeded to 10.6.4 by update, but that did not make it better.
3.) next clean install (two tries wirth different backups) by my backup from time machine. It worked until it rebootet. I ended in a blue screen with every now and then the rotating cirlce, but could not proceed any further.
4.) tried to repair rights hat no effect. The harddisk is reportet to be functional.
5.) Back to the roots, i thought, installing 10.4. which came on the grey disks with the mini. I encountered the same problems after installing, furthermore, on trying to install flash 10.1 it could not open the .dmg-file.
6.) Installed Win XP. All seems funktional.
So, please, can anyone tell me, what is wrong with my mac mini? to me, it seems to be a problem with hardware, but i cannot verivy this. Please help me.

MathiasLeopold wrote:
3.) next clean install (two tries wirth different backups) by my backup from time machine. It worked until it rebootet. I ended in a blue screen with every now and then the rotating cirlce, but could not proceed any further.
Did you use a Leopard Install disc to restore a Snow Leopard backup? If so, that's the problem. You must use a Snow Leopard Install disc to restore a Snow Leopard backup.
If you did use the right disc, were you restoring backups from the same Mac?
If so, were you having problems before all this started? If you were, it's possible those problems corrupted your installation of OSX, and that was copied to the backups.
So, please, can anyone tell me, what is wrong with my mac mini? to me, it seems to be a problem with hardware, but i cannot verivy this. Please help me.
Try running this: Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test

Setting up a new mac lion from time machine backup...how do you do it?

Bought a new macbook pro. Need to install my old disk image to it from Time MAchine. When I tried it...it posted an old backup from 2 years ago...
Help!

Hi Mrs. McD and Welcome to Apple Discussions,
First of all I think you should repost this here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=189
That's the Intel iMac forum and you will receive a lot more pertinent information there regarding their experience with the Intel iMacs.
I set up a Mac lab last year at Baker Demonstration School in Wilmette IL. We didn't have your budget so most of our machines are G4 towers with 2 G5 towers and recently 2 iMac G5s. All were donated. So I can't address most of your high end questions. We have been creating a lot of movies mostly using Final Cut Pro and also iMovie.
As to photography I have 2 pro clients who mostly use LightRoom. I personally like Bridge and I think she also uses Photo Mechanic. She originally wanted an iMac but I talked her into a Mac Pro with 2 24" Cinema Monitors. All that extra real estate is very useful for editing photos and also for editing movies. This is pretty much the standard setup. My son edits movies with 4 30" Cinema Displays but he's also doing a lot of rendering.
I've been working with a young pro photographer here in Chicago. We've made a pole attachment for high angle shots and he was recently talking about kite photography.
Actually the IT support guy at the school is also a photographer and I've donated Macs to two photo teachers at the high school level in Chicago so I could ask them.
I agree wholeheartedly about the wireless keyboards and mice. Baker is a preK to middle school and all the keyboards and mice are wired. Less loss. We also use a lot of headphones and have dongles that the phones plug into. This saves wear and tear on the input jack which is easily damaged especially located where it is on the iMacs.
Richard
Message was edited by: spudnuty

How to restore new mac book from time machine

i curentley have a mac book and am planing on upgrading to a pro but i have to sell this one first. can i restore my new mac pro using the time machine backup from this mac book or is there another way i have to do this being as i wont have both laptops at the same time??
thanks for any help..

If you can recover the old machine (may not be worth the cost), then you could deactivate directly. A lot depends on what crashed, the HD, mother board, or other. On a PC, the hard drive can sometimes be recovered with SpinRite as long as the crash was not fatal. There are other tricks too, but all of them depend on the crash conditions and what the problem is. If the hard drive is actually good, maybe you could just put it in another machine and run the deactivation. Of course, not everyone has a bunch of machines on hand to play with. For PCs, I often head to the department surplus pile and see if I can find something to work with (not my stock). If I find a working machine there, then I just swap it out. Of course, that is for work machines. For a home machine, I might do it for testing or repair and then put things back after the repair.

How to restore from Time Machine WITHOUT install discs using a second Mac

It's a question that is asked repeatedly all over the web by Mac users like me that bought in to Time Machine (TM) on the assumption that if their computer died one day it would be a piece of cake to restore from it, only for that day to come and then to be told "ahh, okay the first thing is to get your computers install discs..." (loud crashing sound of world falling around ears).
I've never been able to afford a new Mac and both of my machines were bought second-hand. Neither came with Leopard (both have Tiger and have been upgraded to Leopard via the net). This was never supposed to be a problem as I've been backing up with TM. However it appears that Tiger discs are as much use as an inflatable dart board when it comes to using TM. So I've been faced with the possibility of having to spend £130 (about two hundred Pres Sheets, Yankees) on the Leopard install discs just so that I can have the option of restoring from TM. Bonkers.
However after much nashing of teeth, a very long weekend learning all sorts of things about 'Target Mode', 'Single User Mode', 'Verbose Mode', 'Open Source 9' etc the following solution has worked without the need to go out and buy those over-priced discs...
What you will need:
1 broken Mac requiring restoration
1 second donor Mac running Leopard (or Snow Leopard so long as the broken Mac can run it)
1 firewire cable with the correct fitting at either end to attach both Macs together
1 Time Machine backup
Note: The following is for when you have given up trying to boot from your hard drive. In my case I couldn't boot in to Safe Mode etc. so was forced to format my drive and re-import everything. If you've read this far I'm assuming your at the same point as well and have tried everything else that's out there first.
Also - both my Macs are Power PC's so can't run Snow Leopard, so I can't say 100% this will work with SL (Intel) machines. From what I've read Snow Leopard will work with this procedure too, but if you've found differently please feel free to add your experiences below...
STEP ONE: Format the corrupt Hard Drive or replace with a fresh HDD
*Link the two computers with a firewire.
*If you're replacing your HDD, remove your corrupted hard drive from the 'broken' machine and insert a new one.
*Power up the broken Mac whilst holding down the 'T' key. This will start it up in Target Mode and you'll get a nice firewire symbol floating around that machine's screen.
*Power up the second 'healthy' Mac. This will be our 'donor' machine. When it starts up after a few seconds you will see the hard drive of the broken Mac appear on the donor Mac's desktop.
*Using your donor Mac's 'Disc Utility', format the broken Mac's hard drive (now's the time to partition it etc. if you want to).
STEP TWO: Clone your donor Mac
Your broken Mac is no longer broken and now needs a new OS. But you don't have the discs, right? Well get this... you can clone your donor mac on to your machine, even if they are totally different i.e. a laptop on to a tower.
*Again using Disc Utility, click on your donor Mac's hard drive. The restore tab appears as an option.
*Click on restore and drag the donor Mac's hard drive that contains the operating system in to the Source box.
*Drag the newly formatted hard drive on the broken Mac in to the Destination box.
*Click restore. Your donor Mac's hard drive will now be 'cloned' on to your no-longer-broken Mac. Once this is done, eject the first Mac's hard drive from your donor Mac's desktop. You no longer need the donor Mac.
Ta daa! Your machine now starts up happy and smily again. Time to restore all that stuff that's been sat on your Time Machine drive...
STEP 3: Restore from Time Machine using Migration Assistant
This is the really clever part that prompted me to write this piece in the first place. Time Machine IS accessible without those Leopard install discs you don't have. You need to use something called 'Migration Assistant'.
*Start up your machine as normal and you'll see it is an exact clone of the donor machine. Weird huh?
*Attach your Time Machine hard drive. It will show up as an icon on the desktop and because of it's size, you'll be asked if you want to use it as a Time Machine backup. Err, NO YOU DON'T! Click 'cancel'.
*Open Migration Assistant (if you can't find it just type it in to Finder and click). There are three options, the middle one being to restore from TM or another disc. Yup, you want that one.
*Migration Assistant will now ask you what you want to restore in stages, firstly User Accounts, then folders, Apps etc. It will even import internet settings
And that's you done. Let Migration Assistant do it's thang... altogether I had about 140gb to restore, so it wasn't exactly speedy. This wasn't helped by the fact that my TM hard drive is connected via USB (yes, I know). Just leave it alone and it'll whirr happily away...
Before I go - you don't have an option of when to restore from, and will restore from the last Time Machine save. At least then you should be able to access TM and go 'backwards' if you need to.
Also - for a Mac expert, the above will be up there with 'Spot Goes To The Farm' in terms of complexity. However, for the rest of us the above is only available in fragments all over the net. By far the most common response to 'how do I restore from Time Machine without install discs' is 'you can't'. If I'd found the above information in one place I could have saved a lot of hair pulling and swearing over the last couple of days, so forgive me for sharing this workaround with the rest of the world. Meanwhile your expertise will come in very handy for the inevitable questions that will get posted below, so please feel free to help those people that won't be sure if this solution is the right one for them. I'm no expert, I just want to help people that were stuck in the same situation (and looking at the web, there's a LOT of them).
Hope this is of use to someone, thanks and *good luck*!

Most maintenance and repair, restore and install procedures require the use
of the correct OS X install DVD; be it an original machine-specific restore/install
disc set or a later retail non-specific general install disc set.
By having an unsupported system, perhaps installed via an illegal download or
other file-sharing scheme, where no retail official discs are involved and the
initial upgrade was done by other means outside of the License Agreements,
you are asking us to discuss a matter of illegal installation and use of a product.
There are no legal complete OS X system download upgrades online; only bits
that are update segments to a retail or as-shipped machine's original OS X install.
+{Or an installation where a previous owner had correct retail upgrade discs, &+
+chose to not include them with the re-sale of the computer it was installed in.}+
However, to answer the initial question. To get and use an externally enclosed
hard drive in suitable boot-capable housing, and get a free-running Clone
Utility (download online; often a donation-ware product, runs free) you can
make a bootable backup of everything in your computer to an external HDD.
This is the way to make a complete backup to restore all functions to the computer.
The Time Machine has some limits, in that it can restore only that which it saves.
It does not make a bootable clone of your entire computer system with apps and
your files, to an external drive device. A clone can. And some of the clone utility's
settings can also backup changes to an external drive's system; if that other drive
is attached to the computer correctly.
Carbon Copy Cloner, from Bombich Software; and also SuperDuper, another of
the most known software names you can download and use to clone boot-capable
system backups of your computer's hard disk drive contents, are often cited.
However you resolve the matter of the running OS X system in your computer,
derived from what appears to be questionable means, is part of the initial issue.
Since you do need to be able to fix an existing installation by unmounting the
computer's hard disk drive and run the computer from the other (install disc or
system clone) while it is Unmounted; and use the correct Disk Utility version to
help diagnose and perhaps be able to fix it. You can't use a Tiger version Disk
Utility to fix a Leopard installation, and so on.
So, the situation and replies as far as they can go (since the matter does
constitute an illegal system, if it was arrived at without correct discs) is a
limited one. And file sharing of copied Mac OS X (and other) software is
also considered illegal.
And, one way to get odd malware and unusual stuff, is to get an unauthorized
system upgrade from an illegal source online. You never know what's inside it.
The other reply was not a personal attack; the matter is of legal status and as
you have a product with a questionable system, the answer is to correct it.
And if you want to save everything in your computer, make a clone to a suitable
externally enclosed self-powered boot capable hard disk drive. With older PPC
Macs, that would best be to one with FireWire and the Oxford-type control chips.
However that works out...
Good luck & happy computing!

Will a system restore from Time Machine erase any of the data that is currently on the Mac and not in the Time Machine?

We had a lot of data on our Mac (i.e. photos, iTunes libraries etc) which we backed up via Time Machine. The hard disk corrupted so we had to get it wiped. When we got it back, my parents started using the mac as per usual but they didn't do a full System Restore from Time Machine. So, if I do a full restore now, will it erase any of the new photos, musc etc that is currently on the mac?

The Time Machine restore will only restore what is on Time Machine. Making a clone is probably a better means of ensuring whatever data you want recovered gets recovered together with Time Machine.
Generally speaking, applications that are newer than the operating system from Apple that are included with the operating system are not supported. So in your data recovery process from your clone, you'll have to be careful what data you choose to copy back.

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...

Install new hard drive, restore from Time Machine, File Vault Problems

Hello all,
I spent way too much time on this seemingly simple task, so I thought I would share my experience with others so they can avoid some pitfalls when upgrading a hard drive in a system that uses File Vault 2 encryption. The basic goal here is to replace a drive in a system that has only one drive, and the OS is Mavericks, and then have the new drive encrypted as before.
The problem is that a Time Machine restore onto a new drive will leave that without a Recovery Partition, which is required for File Vault 2 and some other important things. So we need to build a recovery partition. There are possibly several ways to do this.
Here's what worked for me (this is compiled from many sources that I found and already closed the tabs in my browser so I can't list all my sources):
1) Make a full backup to an external hard drive using Time Machine.
2) Go into the App Store and download OS X Mavericks but dont install it (close the window when it pops up asking to continue the install). Do this even if you already have Mavericks. At this point, there will be a folder in your Applications folder called Install OS X Mavericks (or similar).
3) Insert a USB drive that is at least 8 GB and format it using Disk Utility, naming it the default "Untitled".
4) Open a terminal and type
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction
5) Wait for this to finish (took me about 30 min). Eject the USB drive and power down.
6) Remove the old hard drive and set it aside. Keep it for a few weeks until you know the new drive is working as expected.
7) Install the new hard drive and insert the USB drive. Hold the option key and press the power button. Choose to boot from the USB installer.
8) Use the disk utility to erase whatever partition shipped with the new drive, replacing it with a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) system. Verify that GUID is the partition type (in Advanced options).
9) Close the disk utility and install Mavericks. This can take a long time. My new drive is an SSD, and it sat at the "1 second remaining" part for about 20 min. Let it reboot (maybe it was 2 times?) and go through the setup until it finishes the install.
10) Boot into the freshly installed OS and open a terminal and type:
diskutil list
11) If there is a partition listed as Apple_Boot Recovery HD (mine was 650 MB), then you now have a recovery partition. If not, then go into the App store and download Mavericks, but don't use the USB this time, choose to do a regular install (or reinstall to be more correct).
12) Now there will be a recovery partition on the new drive and Time Machine will not overwrite it when restoring. Power down the system.
13) Plug in the Time Machine backup drive used in step 1. Press the option key and power on. Choose to boot from the recovery partiton (Mavericks).
14) Choose to restore from Time Machine backup. Wait until it finishes and log into the old familiar account.
15) Start a terminal and verify the recovery partition is still there (type diskutil list and see that the Apple_Boot Recovery HD is there). If it's missing, choose to download Mavericks from the App Store again and run the installation from this one.
16) Once there is a Mavericks recovery partition on the restored data you can simply turn on File Vault from the System Preferences Security section. It will require a reboot and then you login and wait for it to finish.
What a major pain to go through all of this for the sake of upgrading a hard drive. This should not be anywhere near as complicated. I hope this helps others avoid the very time consuming trial and error I went through in developing this procedure.

Talked with Apple last night. Everything we did to restore lost images failed to fix the issue. I did have the images still on my camera's SD card so I was not breaking out in a cold sweat.
All Time Machine backups showed the same issue. HOWEVER, I suddenly remembered I also had a SuperDuper backup and voila. The images were there.
Moral of the story: you can't ever be too rich or have too many backups (I also have an offsite backup).

Help Restoring New Hard Drive from Time Machine

To replace a failing Macintosh HD, I created an OS X Mountain Lion boot disk on a flash drive, put my new hard drive in a USB external dock, booted to the flash drive, partitioned and formatted the new drive (selecting GUID partition), and have tried and failed three times to restore from Time Machine, which is on a Firewire-connected drive. The error I get is that it's unable to create a restore disk.
I could reformat the new drive and try again, but is there something else I'm missing? For example, should I have left the new drive in the external dock, or should I move it to bay 1 and then try to restore, considering that latency is a possible issue or that Time Machine won't restore to a USB drive?

Why don't you install ML on it and then see?
Better yet use any of the 4 internal drive bays instead of USB - slow and terrrible place!
It does not matter where or what drive bay.
Unable to unmount drive.
CLONE your system - a couple times, pure Apple Mac OS once you have one and later for working copy and one before you install or apply updates or programs or otehr changes.
CCC carbon copy cloner - will create recovery partition when you clone a system.
I assume your flash drive works, not everyone is successful first shot.
I prefer a clean install to start with. Esp as you say your system was failing I don't like relying on the Time Machine for everything.

HT4718 Installed new hard drive, click on restore from time machine, get to 'select a destination' but just keeps searching for disks.. any help please?

Installed new hard drive and want to restore from time machine.
Get as far as 'select a destination' then it goes no further - just keeps 'searching for disks'
Help anyone please?

1. Be sure your drive is attached and mounted.
2. If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next step.
3. In the Finder, choose Go > Utilities. The /Applications/Utilities folder will open.
4. Launch Disk Utility.
5. Click the icon for your external hard drive in the sidebar on the left.
6. Click the Erase tab along the top of the window.
7. From the Volume Format menu, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
8. Enter a name for the external hard drive in the Name field.
9. Click the Erase button.
Make Sure that you choose the correct drive

New MBP set up - restore from time machine

My old MacBook (mid 2007) running Snow Leopard has died. I just got a new MBP Retina running Yosemite.
Now, I have a few question that I googled for answers, but I am confused. I would appreciate any help, guide, orientation.
(1) Will I have problems restoring from Time Machine, created on a Snow Leopard, to a new MBP running Yosemite?
(2) Should I say yes when the set up assistant ask me to "restore from a back up"?
My goal is to have all the files, apps, and configuration from my old Mac into the new one keeping the new OS.
Is that possible?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Vero.

I got "stuck" here:
"For details and instructions, see the appropriate page:
Using Setup Assistant on Mountain Lion or Lion
Using Setup Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard
Using Setup Assistant / Migration Assistant on Panther or Tiger"
I have Yosemite, should I follow the instruction for Using Setup Assistant on Mountain Lion or Lion?
I apologize if my question is "dumb" I just don't wanna mess up anything. I also realize my time machine has been created in Lion not Snow Leopard.
Thanks again!

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?

Had to install a new hard drive early 2008 iMac, now can't restore from Time Machine.

Had to install a new hard drive in a early 2008 iMac, now can't restore from Time Machine. Backups show in Time Machine but I can't select them.
Serial Number QP*****1LW
<Edited by Host>

Here are some notes on Time Machine problems.
http://pondini.org/TM/
Troubleshooting.html
I have asked the hosts that your serial number be removed. Best not to publish it,

After lion 10.7.3 update messed my mac had to restore from time machine now Outlook won't connect with microsoft exchange, any idea?

after lion 10.7.3 update messed my mac had to restore from time machine now Outlook won't connect with microsoft exchange, any idea?

I've had a similar problem. On my first boot up after installing 10.7.4, Firefox would not open. Crashed every time. Safari was not affected. I have no idea if it was related to the flash plugin, but I did install a the latest version of that a couple of weeks ago.
Here's what fixed it: a second boot up.

Restore from Time machine on new 13" Macbook Pro 2.8 i7 after replacing with OWC SSD

I have new 13" Macbook pro with Apple 256SSD. I am replacing with OWC 480GB 6GB SSD because out of space. When I bought machine I used time machine to restore from backup of other macbook pro. I simply held a key on keyboard at startup (dont remember key?) and it appeard to boot from the cloud to a screen where i selected time machine. Will it work the same this time or because I am replacing hard drive i have to create the USB key thing to restore from time machine? ie does apple have the restore from cloud capability only from their own drives?

You should consider restoring or migrating first only data that you absolutely need and want on the SSD. Then restore selectively.
On the latter, and in general on the topic Time Machine, here is good advice.

New Mac, restore from Time Machine

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