Reformatting Partition - Using Timemachine as back to restore

Hi guys. I have to basically reformat my harddrive because it seemed to be having issues after I installed bootcamp/windows 7. The repair disk recommend I backup the drive, as a means of resolving some bad sectors. Is Timemachine a suitable backup? As in... I can let it erase my harddrive, then use time machine from an external to fully restore my computer to how it was (including music, software, movies, and other installations).
Thanks

Yes, Time Machine will work for that.
However, I'd strongly recommend that you also make a "bootable clone" on a separate external HD. That will protect you against a failure of either backup app or HD when you reformat your internal HD. It isn't common for that to happen, but it does now and then, and you can be in a very large (and expensive) pickle when it does.
The most common apps for that are CarbonCopyCloner (donationware) and SuperDuper (about $30, but there's a free version that will work for this).
Once you get this resolved, continue to make regular backups with both apps, to protect you against another problem with the internal, or something else awful happening.

Similar Messages

HT201250 Hello i am using TimeMachine to back-up entire Mac image (data + system) on an usb-local drive. I would like (on top of it) add a specific plan to back up some files on a remote network drive. Does TimeMachine support multiple back-up plans ? How

Hello i am using TimeMachine to back-up entire Mac image (data + system) on an usb-local drive. I would like (on top of it) add a specific plan to back up some files on a remote network drive. Does TimeMachine support multiple back-up plans ? How ?

Time Machine is capable of backing up to multiple locations, and can be used to back up to both a local hard drive and a networked drive (provided that that drive is in or connected to a Time Capsule or another Mac that is sharing it over the network). The catch, though, is that you can't specify different things to back up to different destinations. Whatever you exclude from Time Machine backups is excluded from ALL backups, and whatever is included is included on all.
So, get a large enough drive that you can back up everything you want in all locations, or use something else for maintaining the network backup.
More information on these topics can be found here:
How do I set up Time Machine to a shared drive on another Mac?
How do I set up Time Machine to a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme?
"Rotating" Time Machine backup disks

Using TimeMachine to Restore a Mac with a Back Up of another Mac

I have a 24" iMac in my home office; I use TimeMachine to back it up. I have a 24" iMac at a client site whose TM back-ups were deleted... ...to save myself the stress of having to reinstall all my software, I tried to restore from the TM Back-Up of my home office machine. A great number of things failed. Adobe CS3, (which I am currently reinstalling, something I was trying to avoid), mobileMe failed for the longest time and required a great deal of fiddling...
...anyone have any idea why this all went so darn wrong? I've got most problems solved, but I'd like to know how to avoid this issue in the future. For example, why did all of my software go bad and require new installs?
Message was edited by: arsenalarmada

V.K. is correct.
What do you mean by "all my software"?
Unless you specifically excluded your Applications folder, all your Apple apps, and almost all 3rd-party apps, if that's where you put them, should have been saved by TM, and restored. (A few 3rd-party apps are coded by their authors so TM can't save them.
If you put them anywhere else, they still should have been saved and restored, unless you specifically excluded those places.

Error in Restoring the HDD partition using BootCamp assist

This is regarding error in restoring the HDD partition using BootCamp assist. Yesterday I was trying to instal Windows 8.1 Pro on my Mac Mini.
Started had installing windows software using Boot Camp assist using the USB flash drive
Took the back of Windows Support software from Apple store
Did the HDD partitioning for Windows,
Then went ahead to install the windows and automatically machine restarted.
After few minutes started installing Windows... and stuck for more than 3hrs at by displaying the blue screen of Windows installation... and inactive
I had restarted the using start button, and finally I could not able to install Windows.
Then I got black screen with message ' No boot disk, please insert boot the disk and press any key to restart'
I have restarted using start button by holding 'Alt' key
Finally I could able to started machine with OS X
Now I wanted to remove the partition created above, using Boot Camp assist, but it is not able to do it. There is error message ' Error while restoring the hard disk'
Any help, how to remove this partitioning? Also in every restart I need to hold 'Alt' key to boot the machine with OS X.
-Narsimloo Begari

if you've tried and cannot remove the partition with boot camp assistant, you'll have to open disk utility and reformat the partition there - choose mac journaled and then try to combine this partition back into your existing Mac partition

I recently purchase macbook air with OS 10.10.2. I want to use my Seagate external backup plus hard drive for time machine back up. How to partition my 1TB Seagate back up plus hard drive for use with mac and windows pc?

Hi All,
I recently purchased 13" Macbook Air with OS 10.10.2. I want to use my 1TB Seagate backup plus external hard drive as time machine and my windows 7 pc. Please suggest a method. Thanks in advance for your reply.

I strongly recommend having an external drive dedicated solely for TimeMachine. You could partition the drive but if something goes wrong you risk losing the data on both partitions. Should you decide to go ahead with splitting the drive for two different uses you’ll need to partition the drive either using the Mac’s built in Disk Utility program or Windows utility. I believe the built in Windows disk utility program will destroy the current partition and erase the data that’s on it - I use a third party Windows disk utility program for partitioning and it allows for non-destructive partitioning but warns to back up data first just in case. Apple’s Disk Utility can do non-destructive partitions but I don’t recall every trying to do a non-destructive partition on a disk originally formatted for Windows using it. Again - back up that data just in case.
Finally, your TimeMachine drive should be at least 1.5 times (I prefer 2 times) the size of the data you expect to be backing up a year or two from now. In other words, if you currently are using 50GB of your computer’s drive but expect to begin purchasing Mac software to replace software on your Windows computer and if you expect to be putting photos, music, and other data on it you might expect that two years from now you’ll have 100GB of stuff on the drive. So a 200GB partition is the smallest size you’d want. TM’s backup scheme keeps multiple copies of data as it changes so the extra room is important for this scheme.

I'm trying to create a Windows partition using Boot Camp. An error comes up telling me that I need to reformat my current partition(s) into one single partition. However, it's already formatted in the correct format, and is already a single partition.

As made clear in the title:
I'm trying to create a Windows partition using Boot Camp. An error comes up telling me that I need to reformat my current partition(s) into one single partition. However, it's already formatted in the correct format, and is already a single partition.
My computer recently had a kernel panic, which apparently the corruption was in the system and needed to be erased and re-installed. I have a complete back-up using an external hard drive, and I am definitely not willing to do another one of those to reformat a partition that is already singular. I restarted the computer after ejecting my back-up, and after turning off time machine (thinking that boot camp was recognizing it as a secondary partition), however the error still occurs.
Is there any way to get around this?

diskutil list:
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            749.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            Windows7               *2.9 GB     disk1
diskutil cs list:
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found
mount:
/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
/dev/disk1 on /Volumes/Windows7 (udf, local, nodev, nosuid, read-only, noowners)
From my very basic knowledge - it still looks as if there is only one partition (not including the windows 7 CD necessary to install the windows partition).

Creating and restoring a Boot Camp partition using Paragon

I am trying to restore a clone of the Boot Camp partition that's on my MacBook Air (Snow Leopard) to My MacBook Pro (Lion).
I was told I could do this without requiring the Windows 7 installation disk by using Paragon Hard Disk Manager.
I downloaded the Paragon Hard Disk Manager on the MacBook Air in the Windows partition and followed the steps the Wizard told me. I chose back up. I successfully backed up the Boot Camp partition but noticed that the amount of disk space on the back up external drive was about 8GB, but the amount used up by Boot Camp was 16 GB.
When I went into the new computer and tried to create a Boot Camp partition, I am not able to do this without installing Windows software.
When I plugged in the external drive which had the back up on it, it just has some files and no Wizard I can use to restore the Windows partition.
So I think I've done it wrongly.
When I first started the wizard, there was a choice of making an image. I did choose this initially and a message came up and said I had done this but there was nothing else - no information about where this image was and what I should do with it. So I chose "Back up" and that is where I am.
Even if I do manage to create an image that contains everything, the operating system and the files, how can I restore that to the newly created Boot Camp partition on the other computer if in order to create the Boot Camp partition I need to install a Windows 7 disk?
It's not that I don't have a valid Windows 7 installation disk, I do but I have to call telephone support to install it because the activation is tied to the first laptop which has issues and needs to be repaired and that's why I am doing the migration of the data. And it's inconvenient to do the telephone thing because it's after hours now and I want to get the clone of the Windows partition before I send off the computer for repairs which I am supposed to do tomorrow morning.
Plus, I am not sure by using the Windows 7 installation disk and migration of data method that I will have the partition looking exactly the same as before, and that's very important for me because I do internet banking with a foreign bank and it took ages for them to set up the internet banking on my computer, and I am worried that internet banking won't work if I do not have an exact clone of the Windows partition.
I can go back again and try making an image disk but I still have the problem of using the Paragon program which is a Windows program on the Mac operating system, which I have to use when I am creating the Windows partition. Is there other software from Paragon that I am supposed to get?

Paragon didn't work for me and their support is quite lousy. I think I just threw $50 away.
I didn't need another activation key to install Windows 7 on the second computer (MBP). The boot camp installation went smoothly. Once in Windows, I downloaded the software again, Paragon Hard Disk Manager, and then chose "restore". It didn't recognize the archive I had made on the external hard drive no matter what I did. I had to give up after a few tries.
So I went to the Paragon website to look for answers in the support section.
They do not respond to emailed support questions for up to three days after you send in the question even if you are a new customer.
I am tempted to ask for a refund because they have false advertising claiming that their product works when it doesn't.
The steps are not that hard to follow if you use their Wizard and the Wizard told me that I had done everything right and that I had created an archive and I named it and everything.
When I went to restore it, nothing. I couldn't even eject the volume. Very strange.
Their FAQ on Support site is unhelpful and full of technical terminology. Nothing pertains to my problem.
I really don't want the headache. Besides if all I wanted was to do a backup I could have used the free back up and restore utility in Windows 7 which is meant to be excellent.
Another Apple Support Discussion member said they had a similar problem, a problem with the archives, and that even after working with Paragon for seven months, it was still not resolved.
After a certain period of time after you've bought the product, you have to pay $50 to get support. It's not worth the bother.
It's a German company and German companies in general are not big into service. I can tell that this is true with this company.
So having been burned, I really do not want to keep going down this path. I really just want my money back.

Using timemachine backup of snow leopard system to restore on system with Lion

Hello,
My son has a 13" MacBook Pro (2.66 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo) currently running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 which has a broken keyboard and a battery that won't charge. He regularly uses timemachine to make full backups of his system. We want to give him an old 13" MacBook Pro (2.66 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo), which is currently running Lion Mac OS X 10.7.5.
Is it possible for him to restore his entire system from Time Machine running Snow Leopard to a MacBook Pro that has Lion? If so, what are the best steps to have the target MacBook wiped or prepared for him to restore from his Time Machine back up, given that the systems are on different levels of OS X?
He's not wedded to keeping Snow Leopard - so can the migration occur without him having to upgrade his old broken MacBook Pro first? Would the target Mac get "downgraded" to Snow Leopard on the restore (which would be ok too)?
Thanks in advance. If there's any other info that will help clarify, please ask.

If he has no PPC apps that won't run on Lion, then the simplest thing to do is hook up the two machines and use the Migration Assistant to transfer his user account to the newer MBP. Once done, have him log into that account (assuming that it's an admin one), launch the Accounts prefPane, and delete the other accounts. That should do the trick.

Backing and Restoring two OS X partitions?

If I have two OS X partitions from one MBP and I use TM to back them up on an external hdd, how would I go about restoring either one of those partitions? Would TM System Restore give me the option to choose a specific OS X partition to restore at any given time?
Message was edited by: superspiffy

You can restore either of your startup partitions from Time Machine. To do a System Restore boot from your Leopard Installer DVD. After you choose a language select "Restore System From Backup" from the Utilities menu. After that you can choose both source and destination volumes/partitions as well as being able to choose which specific Time Machine you wish to use for the restore.

Multiple iphones each with an apple id - can i use the same laptop and itunes for back up, restore and updates?

We have two iphones each with a different apple id - can i use the same laptop and itunes for back up, restore and updates without risking having my apps overwritten. Basically does itunes keep the two iphones as two separate entities ? Does iTunes differentiate between the two devices and keep two different SYNCs ?

Yes, you can use the same computer for BACK UPS, RESTORING AND UPDATING. But that is it.
You cannot, however, use it to sync the different devices. iTunes will only recognize one device to sync with and if you sync any other devices with that iTunes library, it will replace what is on the phone with whatever is in the library. It cannot differentiate between devices. At most, it will jsut recognize that the phone has been synced with a different iTunes library.
So if you would like to use the same computer for backing up, restoring and updating, just make sure to turn of Automatic Syncing in your iTunes Preferences.

My itunes files were deleted. I was able to use an old back up file to restore some but new downloaded purchases from iTunes for the past 5 months weren't in the back up. How do I get those back since I've paid for them one before and use the same account

My itunes files were deleted. I was able to use an old back up file to restore some but new downloaded purchases from iTunes for the past 5 months weren't in the back up. How do I get those back since I've paid for them one before? Can you redownload? If so, how?? Please help as I'm missing over 500 previously paid for and downloaded iTunes song purchases.

This was EXACTLY what I needed about the purchases I made from my device. However, is there a way to re-download other ones you've made from a computer? Because I realized some of them were not just purchased from my device.
This is a picture of what it looks like now:
http://tinypic.com/r/107quxu/7
As you can see, the stuff circled in red doesn't give me an option to download from Cloud Beta because it already says "downloaded".
any way to get around that?

How do I access information backed up using timemachine, from an older macbook?

I have a new macbook pro and I would like to have access to my old files and pictures that were on my old computer. I backed up my older mac onto an external hardrive using timemachine. Can I access those files without "downloading" it all onto my new computer? If so, how? If I can't, do I just need to get a new external hardrive and manually copy those files onto it from my old computer? I still have it and it is still working, just slowly.
Thanks!

You don't need to download everything. One option is explained in "Time machine or other disk migration" in the following link: OS X: How to migrate data from another Mac using Mavericks
Alternatively, you can click on the Time Machine icon in your menu bar and press the Option key and it will display "Browse other backup disks."

TS4036 I recently got the new iPhone 5c I used icloud to back everything up from my 4s to my new 5c. Now, I keep getting a pop up that says Continue Restoring? (This iPhone has not been backed uprecently because it has not finished being restored. Would

I recently got the new iPhone 5c I used icloud to back everything up from my 4s to my new 5c. Now, I keep getting a pop up that says Continue Restoring? (This iPhone has not been backed uprecently because it has not finished being restored. Would you like to finish downloading any remaining purchases and media before backing up, or delete them along with any app date?)
I seleted to finish downloading because I didn't want to lose anything. It still will not finish downloading and I have tried this several times.
What do I need to do to that I can get my iphone to back up and so that I can install the new iOS?

Hello there, Brandifoote24.
The following Knowledge Base article offers up an explanation of what you're error signifies:
iCloud: Understanding Backup alert messages
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4576
"This iPhone has not been backed up recently because it has not finished being restored. Would you like to finish downloading any remaining purchases and media before backing up, or delete them along with any app data?"
This message is displayed if your iOS device has been trying to complete a restore for more than three days. This can occur if your restore has been interrupted due to network connectivity issues or some other problem occurs.
Being that this is the case, you would want to go back to the article it seems you were referred to us from and try to restore from your icloud backup again:
iCloud: Troubleshooting restoring an iCloud backup
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4036
How do I restore an iCloud backup if my device is already set up for use?
You'll need to erase all data and settings from your device, so first confirm that you have an iCloud backup to restore:
Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage, then tap the name of your device to view a list of iCloud backups.
Check the date of the backup you want to restore, because you'll be restoring only what iCloud backed up on that date.
After confirming that an iCloud backup is available, follow these steps:
Connect your device to a power source and make sure that it is connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi.
Follow the instructions for restoring your iOS device from an iCloud backup, which include making sure that your device is using the latest version of iOS.
If the issue persists, then I would troubleshoot Wi-Fi using the following article:
iOS: Troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks and connections
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1398
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro.

Do I need to partition my hard drive to use Airport to back up my files on my iMac intel?

Airport Utility was pre-installed on my iMac (Intel) and I don't know how to use Time Machine with Airport. I want to backup my hard drive and thought that Time Machine would do this. I receive a message to select a Backup Disc. Do I have to partition my hard drive to have the backup on my iMac? Alternately I could purchase an external hard drive with USB 3.0. Would Time Machine detect the USB external drive so that I could select that as the Backup Disc? Are there any cons for Apple wireless hard drives?

The idea with Time machine is to use it to back up to an external drive. Once connected you would tell Time Machine to use that drive.
However before you do that, connect the external drive and open Disk Utility
1. Click on the external drive
2. Click on the Erase tab and select Mac OS extended, Journaled.
3. Click Apply
When finished it will be formatted correctly and then open Time machine and tell it to use it as the Time machine backup disk.
a handcrafted note by roam

Cannot restore Boot Camp partition using Boot Camp Assistant with OS X 10.6

I have decided to eliminate my Boot Camp partition running Windows Vista, but when I attempted to restore the partition using Boot Camp Assistant, I got the following message:
Boot Camp Assistant cannot be used.
You must update your system software before using this setup assistant.
I am running Snow Leopard, and there IS no update to the system software! How do I resolve this?

Found the answer. . . I needed to enable journaling on my hard drive and. . .voila!

Reformatting Partition - Using Timemachine as back to restore

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for