Recover from TM to external usb drive while in normal operation

I know only one point where the recovery process can be started, it is the recovery mode cmd+R.
As soon as in recovery mode the Mac is not available for other tasks.
The situation is that a TM backup resides in network.
We like to test that backup by recovering it to an external usb drive.
For this we need to boot in recovery mode.
However the test should take place in background so the regular tasks can continue normally.
How to start recovery from TM on network to external usb drive connected to Mac
but while Mac is in normal operation?

Aimed goal is quite simple.
Whole OS X Mavericks installation has to be restored from Time Machine backup, whereby
Time Machine backup is in LAN on some NAS
It has to be restored/recovered to usb drive connected to the Mac those TM backup is of
The recovery process has to run in background
In foreground the regular job can be conducted (means the OS X is in normal operation)

Similar Messages

I would like to recover my bookmarks from my old hard drive that I now have as an external USB drive. The old OS was Vista; the new is Windows 7.

I recently had a new hard drive installed on my laptop; this hard drive has the Windows 7 OS on it.
At the same time, I had my old hard drive mounted in an SATB enclosure so that I could use it as an external USB drive. [I stupidly did not export my bookmarks before doing all of this]
Everything seems to work fine [I can see all of the files], but I cannot find out where my bookmarks are stored on the old hard drive.
Is it possible to find them and get them transferred over to the new hard drive??
Thanks!!

Bookmarks are stored in a file called places.sqlite inside the profile folder. You can copy that file from the old profile folder into your current profile folder. For details of how to find the profile folder see https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Profiles or http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
You can recover more than just the bookmarks - https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile

Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation it gives me an input/output error and stops. Any tips?

Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation and after having selected both my destination and source drives, the operation begins but soon fails due to input/output error. If I try to create an image of the drive it gives me the same error message. Any help would be much appreciated.

Disk Utility only creates a image of the drive, so it's no help getting exactly what you want, which is your files. If the file structure is messed up or the drive is failing then it's no help.
If you have a external boot drive and you can't access the internal non-booting drive though the typical Finder and windows to transfer your files via drag and drop methods, then you need to install Data Rescue on the external boot drive and it will do as best as it can to recover your files. (works on non-encrypted/non-Filevaulted drives only)
.Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
Are you sure you have hard drive failure, or that OS X isn't merely not booting?
Because if the drive is working physically, then there is a host of fixes
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/

How can I do backups on internal disc while sharing an external USB drive?

Hi,
On my Airport Utility there are two lines: "Time Capsule Disc", and below (indented) "Data".
(When I plug an external USB drive I can see it in this window as well)
Clicking (selecting) the first line, on the right hand side I can see the disc details (name, capacity and SMART Status (Verified)), and two buttons: Compress and Erase (I don't know if these are the words used on the english version mine is spanish).
Clicking on the second line (Data) I can see the Name "Data", capacity, used and available sizes and number of users connected.
First question:
Why Time Machine can't see the "Data" volume if I untick the "Share files" checkbox?
Second question:
Moreover, I've got a USB External Drive attached to my Time Capsule, so I have to have the "Share Files" checkbox ON, this makes my USB disc (fat32) available to my Windows computers but ALSO the "Data" volume can be seen from Windows. If there is any attempt to assign a Windows drive letter to the "Data" volume, next time Time machine wants to do a backup I'm getting a "disc wrong or missing, check credentials (or something similar)".
In summary, what I'm trying to do is Time Machine backups to the internal Time Capsule disc (making that disc unavailable/invisible to any other computer in my network) while sharing a USB external drive attached to Time Capsule.
Advice, please!

Yes you can go to > Music > iTunes folder and copy the whole iTunes folder and drag the folder to your external and then on the new Mac click and highlight the iTunes folder and then in iTunes click on the button at the top (add folder to library) and you should see all your songs transfer from the external to the Mac and all songs start filling up in your iTunes library on the Mac.
This is the easiest method all songs and other media such as songs, movies, apps will be transferred over however you may not be able to keep ratings & last played counts using this method.
To keep all metadata including ratings & play count use the Apple method exclusively for this if you have to have your metadata, play counts and ratings saved.
I used scenario one above because it one of the simplest methods and I was just satisfied enough just to transfer all media over.

How to recover after performing an 'Erase' and then 'Partition' within Disk Utility of an External USB drive?

Hi - I accidently ran an 'Erase' and then 'Partition' within Disk Utility of an External USB drive (meant to run it against another drive that was plugged in). Does anyone have any suggestions on if it is possible to recover from this? It has all my family photos on it and my backup is a few months old :-(
I tried running Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery but it found what looks like basic mac folder structure (probably from the first erase). I think what messed me up was that I rain the repartition which formats the drive a 2nd time! Any help is truly appreciated!
thank you,
-Steve

Hello RalphR_MI,
Take a look at this page, which lists several articles. Please let me know if any of these help you restore your backup.
Also, take a look at this article, as well as this one.
I hope this helps. I'm not sure of a few things, so I'm sorry for sending you so much, but I'm confident it will give you something new to try.
Please let me know if this helps. Good luck!
↙-----------How do I give Kudos?| How do I mark a post as Solved? ----------------↓

Can a time machine usb drive backup the data from an external usb drive connected to and airport extreme*

can a time machine usb drive conected to my mac book backup the data from an external usb drive connected to and airport extreme ?

Hi Adam, if you think yoiur HD may be failing you could do a TM restore onto the new disk. I would rather see you do a clone either SuperDuper or CarbonCopy Cloner.Of your internal drive. That way you have a bootable backup in case it does fail.
btw - what are the symptoms of your failing drive?
-mj
Message was edited by: macjack

HP dv6-6188ca windows 7 pro 64b amd chipset 8G locks up copying files to/from external usb drive

When ever I try to copy a large (>2G) file to or from a external usb drive the computer starts the copy but gets stuck. It has to be powered off and the battery removed to get it to work again.

Please repost your inquiry in the Microsoft Windows 7 Performance Forum.
Thank you!
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Expert - Consumer

No application runs after booting from an external (USB) drive

Hi all,
my best hope is that I just embarrass myself with a blatantly obvious question instead of finding a real issue that will be resolved only in later updates. Here it is:
As I want to upgrade my hard drive in my good ol' MacBook, I wanted to backup my present boot HDD to an external USB drive (freshly formatted, HFS+ journaled, GUID partition table). I tried both SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner. In both cases, the backup/cloning process goes fine, and I can reboot into the external drive, and the OS starts (yes, with wifi working, even iStat menus, textExpander etc. initiating fine). But all applications (not those on the menu bar, though) crash and notify me of some thread having tried some invalid operation, or sometimes I even got some vague reference to kernel protection.
Do you have any ideas what this is? Something new and (supposedly) secure in 10.5.6? I tried a fairly standard procedure, I think. (Also, it is a fairly pressing issue as I would not really want to waste much more time on this drive swap. And I would rather use disk-cloning than the install disk and sucking back data from an apparently unreliable backup.)
Many thanks for any thoughts!
(Just to inform the interested, I ran a fairly extensive cleaning-maintenance-rebuild cycle by the latest Onyx before starting all this, this should clean up the state of the OS pretty much. But I could not run DiskWarrior. Convince me if you think that this would solve the problem.)

Thanks Devin, I think my issue is a bit different.
I am 'long' past the 10.5.6 update (as long as possible), it did not crash, and Software Update checked what it wanted several times since then (as it is set to do so daily).
Thanks for the safe boot tip, I have not tried it yet, though I am skeptical why would this help applications starting up without breaking some kernel protection -- but only if I booted up from an external drive.
I repaired all I could before the cloning of the drive, only the deep maintenance of DiskWarrior was skipped. With the disk or the OS itself, I basically did what you can, even the stuff that you are rarely supposed to do. (Onyx is a great tool to do all these and more, freely.)
I am not sure either that a FireWire drive would have helped, but who knows. (But really, the OS would boot, just the applications would feel that their are on an 'inferior' drive?) In any case, FireWire drives are not that easy to come by, and a risky investment -- e.g. I could not use them with the new MacBooks. Oh, and all my work was done on a firm table, but again, the behavior would be hard to explain as the HDD misbehaving, as the OS had no glitch, just I could not start applications without their crashing immediately.
Thanks again, I hope I run into something useful or if it is a bug then Apple magically pushes out some update before their winter break, or I will sadly watch my precious new drive sitting on a table idly.

Can I boot Vista OS from an external USB drive

Hi, I would like to install Vista onto an external (USB) drive and boot from that occasionally whilst retaining XP on the internal drive. Is this possible please. I realise I would need to change the boot order in BIOS.
I know I could create a dual boot internal but would like to retain as much space as possible on the internal drive as I will only rarely need to use the dreaded Vista.
Thanks
Ron

And how you want to install Vista on USB device? Have you already tried it?
Please post a little bit about your experience with it if you have some.
Anyway, as far as I know something like this is not possible.

How to run windows from an external usb drive

Hi,
I've just install windows using bootcamp. after that i restore that windows installed bootcamp volume to an GUID partitioned external HDD. Now it is shown in startup disc, but when i select that (external HDD) volume it is unable to start.
I don't know what to do? I just want to run windows from an external usb drive like i can run mac osx.
please help. thanks

Windows will not run from an external drive.

I want to dual boot Windows 8 on my 20-inch, Mid 2007 iMac, from an external USB drive.

I want to dual boot Windows 8 on my 20-inch, Mid 2007 iMac, from an external USB drive. The internal drive is completely dead, it doesn't even show up in Disk Utility. I'm running 10.8.2 from the external drive. When I start Boot Camp Assistant, at the Introduction page, when I press the continue button nothing happens. Do I have to have internal drive to run Boot Camp Assistant? Can anyone provide me with the steps to dual boot, with his setup? Thanks in advance!

Hi maczimillon,
Only follow these steps, it works for my:
Open "System Information" and note your "Boot ROM Version" (some like MBP51.007E.B06)
Navigate to "Utilities" in Finder and open the package contents of -BootCampAssistant.app- with right click. Duplicate the "Info.plist" file to the Desktop e.g. and open that with Text Editor.
You must locate the keys "DARequiredROMVersions"and "USBBootSupportedModels"
Add new strings with the information of your machine under booth keys (step 1), always respect the format, such as: <string>MBP51.007E.B06</string> for the frist key and <string>MBP51</string> for the second key.
Save changes and replace the original plist file (it may ask you to enter admin pass)
If you proceeded correctly you will see the checkbox "Create a Windows 7 USB install disk" enabled in Boot Camp Assistant.
Then you can follow the usual Boot Camp installation using your WIN8 DVD iso image . The assistant program will proceed resizing your disk partition and installing necessary drivers for your iMac.
I strongly recomends you to use thirld party's bootloaders like rEFInd (rEFIt) because of the Apple SMC versions of some old machines should not be able to boot properly from external devices like USB drives.

BOOT FROM AN EXTERNAL USB DRIVE???

I know apple has made it clear about booting from an external USB drive
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106474
but I know that there are people who are able to boot from an external drive, does anybody know how to do this?
It's just that id like to work on final cut studio on an external drive for various reasons:
1st: my powerbook's HD is small and slow (60gb)
2nd: my external usb drive is big (160 gb) and fast (7200 RMPS!)
so a little help would be apreciated
best regards

"Actually, USB II is faster than FW 400."
In theory, probably. In real life Firewire 400 is much faster than USB2, not to speak of Firewire 800:
"Wee Wiebetech" Portable FireWire/USB2 Drive Challenges The Fastest Competitors.

How do I recover files backed up to an external USB drive during a system recovery operation?

After restoring my system, I began rebuilding the file system. I am on a Vista (Home) based Presario laptop (CQ60-211DX) When I attempted to recover the files, I backed up to an external USB drive, I ran into a problem.
I have been unable to find a way to restore the backup using either the BIOs based utilities of the Windows Backup and Restore programs. The backup exists on the drive, I already confirmed it's presence on the drive.
Does anyone have an idea how to go about this? THe article listed on the HP support forum does not work.

Hello RalphR_MI,
Take a look at this page, which lists several articles. Please let me know if any of these help you restore your backup.
Also, take a look at this article, as well as this one.
I hope this helps. I'm not sure of a few things, so I'm sorry for sending you so much, but I'm confident it will give you something new to try.
Please let me know if this helps. Good luck!
↙-----------How do I give Kudos?| How do I mark a post as Solved? ----------------↓

Moving Time Machine backups from Time Capsule to External USB Drive

Hi all,
hoping someone out there can help I'm trying to move my time machine backups from my old Time Capsule to my external USB drive. I've already used the Airport Utility to "archive" my Time Capsule to a USB connected WD MyBook Elite.
Right now my WD MyBook Elite has both the archive, and recent (roughly 5 backups) of both my MacBook & MacMini. I've tried to follow the seemingly simple steps located in the FAQ's here [URL="http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/18.html#id22"]Copy NETWORK backups to be used LOCALLY[/URL] , but I cannot past step 1.
[Quote]Right-click the new volume on your desktop or Finder sidebar and select Get Info. If the Ignore ownership on this volume box is checked, click the padlock at the lower right and enter your Admin password at the prompt. Then remove the check mark from the box and close the window.[/Quote]
There is no option to "Ignore Ownership" in Snow Leopard for the Spars Bundle or when expanding it to see its folders.
Any advice?
I'm basically trying to combine my backups to unit them into one seemless backup each for:
Mac Mini & MacBook.
Thank you in advance.

Dark Heart wrote:
[Quote]Right-click the new volume on your desktop or Finder sidebar and select Get Info. If the Ignore ownership on this volume box is checked, click the padlock at the lower right and enter your Admin password at the prompt. Then remove the check mark from the box and close the window.[/Quote]
There is no option to "Ignore Ownership" in Snow Leopard for the Spars Bundle or when expanding it to see its folders.
That's not referring to the sparse bundle you're copying FROM, but the new volume you just formatted on the USB drive you're copying TO.
If you didn't just format the partition, that box may not be shown -- it not, there's no problem and you don't need to do anything in that step.
I'm basically trying to combine my backups to unit them into one seemless backup each for:
Mac Mini & MacBook.
I'm not sure what you mean by that: you cannot combine the backups of two different Macs. You can put them both on the same hard drive, either in two different partitions, or, if any are going to be backed-up over a network, in a sparse bundle.
If I've misunderstood, please clarify exactly what you're trying to do.

Trying to move backup from Time Capsule to external USB drive

As per the title, I'm getting rid of my Time Capsule and am trying to move the backups to an external USB drive instead.
Initially I used AirPort Utility 5.6.1 to archive to the USB drive. However, when I switched TM back on, it wanted to do a full backup rather than incremental.
I then found Pondini's very useful page at http://pondini.org/TM/18.html and decided to try it this method instead. It also made me realise that I'd incorrectly formatted the new drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when in fact the TM backup was case sensitive. So I thought this could have been the issue, but still persued Pondini's method. I formatted the drive again, this time in the correct format, and followed Pondini's guide, copying the Backups.backupdb folder from the sparse bundle to the new drive, which completed fine. But unfortunately, TM again wanted to backup everything from scratch when I turned it back on.
Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

So it looks like I was wrong on both counts.
I misunderstood AirPort Utility's archive feature. I failed to realise that archiving actually puts the sparse bundle in a separate folder called "Data Archive" on the new drive, so of course TM won't continue using that existing backup.
It would also seem that I was incorrect in thinking that Pondini's method didn't work. When I tried it again, I realised that TM was in fact continuing the backup. Initially it looks like it's going to do a big backup, but actually only backed up a few hundred megabytes, then everything was back to normal.
Incidentally, I've also found that if you do use AirPort Utility to archive the backup, you can effectively using Pondini's "How can I copy my TM backups to a different location?" by mounting the spare bundle in the "Data Archive" folder, then dragging Backups.backupdb to the root of the drive.
I just wanted to post this for completeness and in case it helps anyone in the future.

Recover from TM to external usb drive while in normal operation

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