Reliability of restoring from a disk image vs from a "normal" backup file

How would you rate the reliability of restoring your data from a disk image file (a sparseimage file, in this case/question) versus from a 'normal' file, e.g. one created by the Backup 3 app?
I read a few discussions here that mention corrupted disk image files...that result in a total loss of data...as opposed to other types of backup files, in which individual files, or folders, could be corruputed.
For some context: my ultimate goal is (a) to create reliable backup files, e.g. in folders in my Home Folder, stored on an external disk drive, and (b) to secure that data.
Thanks to Niel, in a prior discussion, I discovered that I could create a sparseimage file on the Lacie (encrypted).
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=763337&tstart=0
I could then select that secured file as the target / destination for the backup file/s I'm creating with the Backup 3 app. When I log out, that file is locked tight.
But is this 'elegant' solution for backing up data "reliable" when I'll need it at 3am on that dark day when...?
Many thanks.
- David
words to help others' search:
BU3; sparse image;
MBP 15" Core 2 Duo | LaCie d2 250GB ext Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I keep both images of my boot volume which is just OS and apps, and of my home directory. But I also have full regular backups as well. It is not "either or" but a matter of having backup sets that will work. And rotating those sets.
A daily backup, weekly, and monthly. That could require 3 or even 7 or more. Or partitions. But definitely more than one disk drive.
One disk drive backup set should always be safely off line when making a backup set.
Just as I have a clone of the system, an emergency boot drive, and one backup of the last OS revision.
You have to change sparseimage to dmg if you hope to use Apple Disk Utility Restore, especially if you are working from DVD and not from a hard drive.
I've used DU restore and SuperDuper and never seen or suffered a problem or corruption. But I zero drives before use.

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HT201269 where can i find the file/backup file on my account?and how to sync data files one by one manually as i have been told to do so to avoid error restore from my existing backup files from your Sydney Apple Store yesterday? i want my old messages, n

where can i find my data/backup file on my account? thanks

The restore from backup process is all or nothing, & if you've been told NOT to restore from backup, there is no supported way to "selectively" restore an iPhone backup. You can use third-party software to "extract" data from your backup:
http://www.iphonebackupextractor.com/

Using RMAN, how do you restore from an old backup file?

HI,
I use Oracle 9i on Solaris.
I'm currently doing incremental level 0 hot backups every night using RMAN in NOCATALOG mode. The controlfile is backed up with the database. I back it up to a file (e.g. "level0_20041225.dmp"). After I back it up, it's backed up to tape using Veritas. Before doing a backup, I delete the old one first.
I need to restore a copy of the database backup that was taken a month ago. This file is on tape. How do I go about it using RMAN? The documentation is not too clear as it talks more about Restoring the control file and the latest copy of the database.
How do you restore an old copy of the database from a database file?
Pls advise
Thanks

You can recover to the last committed transaction,
provided you have the current controlfile, archived
logs since the backup and the current online logs.
Here's the procedure in a nutshell:
a) Restore datafiles from tape.
b) Recover database using restored files + current
controlfiles and archived/online logs. RMAN will prompt
you for the logs it needs for recovery.
You can also perform this type of recovery using a
backup controlfile. In this case you would still need
all logs as above. After recovery, you would have to
open the database with RESETLOGS because you are using
a backup controlfile.
If you don't want/need to recover up to the last
committed transaction, you use a backup controlfile and
perform incomplete recovery (time or change based). This
simply means that you stop the application of redo at
the time or SCN of your choice.
Most of the scenarios of interest are documented in
the following book:
http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a96566/toc.htm
Hope this helps.
Kailash.

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?

Disk Repair notified me it could not repair the HD. Iam to reformat the disk and restore backed up files. OS Utilities give me a "Restore From Time Machine Backup" option. I have not reformatted the disk; does this restore option do both?

Disk Repair reported that it could not repair the HD Disk. I am to reformat the disk and restore backed up files. OSX Utilities give me a choice of restoring from time machine backup (which I have on MyPassport) but no information on reformatting the disk, which I assume I have to do first. How do I reformat the HD ...or does the restore from Time Machine do both things?

Boot OS X Recovery and use Disk Utility.
If Disk Utility reported the disk cannot be repaired though, you should replace it with a new one.

HT1379 I had to restart by resetting the NVRAM/PRAM. Now I have a window showing OS X Utilities. My options are restore from Time Machine Backup (which I could do), Disk Utility to repair or erase, get help online or reinstall OS X. What should I do?

I had to restart by resetting the NVRAM/PRAM. Now I have a window showing OS X Utilities. My options are restore from Time Machine Backup (which I could do), Disk Utility to repair or erase, get help online or reinstall OS X. What should I do? The problem began when I tried to restart my computer and the only thing I saw was the grey screen, Apple logo, and the timer; the computer wouldn't restart from there.

I searched through trouble shooting options on the Apple Support page and was able to make it this far.

I'm having a problem with logging into a FileVault-protected user account after restoring from Time Machine backup.

Hi all,
My computer had been running really slowly for a while, so I decided to erase the whole hard drive and reinstall the operating system, and then I was going to restore the files I cared about from Time Machine. The main account, which had all my documents and photos, was FileVault-protected. The last thing I did before erasing the hard drive was to run one last Time Machine backup. As far as I remember, I always ran Time Machine backups with the FileVaulted user logged in.
I don't remember whether I was using FileVault 1 or 2. I had been using FileVault 1, but I installed Lion as soon as it came out and I thought I had migrated to FileVault 2 at that point.
Once I erased the hard drive and reinstalled the operating system, I browsed the Time Machine disk and, within the Users folder, there was no folder for the main user account. When I tried to reinstall everything by restoring from Time Machine backup, I'd get the option for all the user accounts, but when I tried to log in with the main one I'd get the dreaded "You are unable to log in to the FileVault user account "User" at this time. Log in failed because an error occurred." Finally, when attempting to restore from the Time Machine backup again, I noticed something strange: After the computer got to about 10% done restoring, it declared itself completed successfully and rebooted.
I've tried a number of tips that came up from questions about similar issues on the Apple support forum, but had no luck. Is there any way to get these files back? Did they ever even get backed up?
Thanks.

Hroodbwai wrote:
I can't find it! not sure what's going on but the only folder shown is the " Shared" folder.
Did you have only the one user account? If there were others, they should also be in the "Users" folder. You probably won't have access to the files inside them, but they should be there.
From what can make out, it looks like it's not backed up any of the files for the filevault account. Can't see user folder when looking through previous backups in Time Machine galaxy view.
Are you doing that from a Finder window set to your internal HD, or your computer name? It should look something like this (with the Finder in List view):
|
|
I'd been logging out and backing up manually on a regular basis.
Scheduled backups should run normally; but they won't back up the File Vault sparse bundle, nor will any run manually.
The only time it's backed-up is when you actually log out.
You should have seen this window on logout:
|
|
followed by this one:
|
|
If you didn't see the second one, or cancelled it, the account wasn't backed-up.

Imac won't restore from time machine backup after HD (hard drive) recall replacement

I have an imac bought in 2011, running Snow Leopard. It required an HD replacement due to the 1 TB Seagate recall - the replacement was done by a certified Apple repair station yesterday. Before the guy left he started a backup/restore from my latest time machine backup set. It failed. I attempted it two times and got error messages that it failed and the computer needed to be restarted to try it again. No luck. I called the guy back and he told me to call Apple Care. Not thrilled about that response since the guy had just left my house I did what he told me to do. (A quick sideline here: I recognize that a time machine backup should be no big deal and SHOULD work everytime, but it doesn't. It irks me that Apple is replacing my HD through no fault of mine and yet they don't allow the restore of data to be a "covered" expense in this process - this isn't just because this was an authorized repair guy - the Apple store would have done the same).
Back to the issue. When I called apple care they pretty much had me try the same thing again with an earlier back up set. To my knowledge, it didn't work. I say this because it looked like it was working and when I came back to the imac later, it had restarted and once again booted to the OSX install. (The boot disc is still in the imac). When I tried to boot from another location, one did not show up to boot from so I assumed that the data didn't transfer and it forced another restart. So, I tried something else. I tried to re-install the snow leopard OSX without using the restore function. That appeared to work and then when the machine restarted it asked if I had another mac and I chose the option to get the files/apps/etc. from my time machine backup. The computer chose what I can only assume is the most recent backup set (It chose what I know to be a subfolder that appears under the dated backup folder - Macintosh HD--which btw is confusing seeing as that's always the name of the HD on the imac). I again stepped away from the computer so it could do its thing for two hours. When I returned, I was back to the MAC OSX screen that asks you to choose a language. There were no more options to choose DISK UTILITY or RESTORE FROM BACKUP, etc. When I clicked on English it took me right back into the screen where you say whether you have another Apple that you want to transfer data from. I realized that the imac must have restarted and I assumed maybe it was because the boot disk was still in - except how do you get the disc to eject? I also initially assumed that the backup had somehow failed again and triggered a restart. I tried to choose the option to just set up the machine without transferring data and when I got to the choose a name for your HOME folder message I tried to enter the same name I had it as before and it wouldn't allow me to do so, saying that that name was already in use. I also tried a different name and that didn't work either - got the same message (I assume if it is not the same name that it won't sync up with the time machine data from the backup set). So, I almost tried the "select time machine backup" option again until I looked at my HD space. Clearly, there is space that has been used. HD space was 997 at the start and now it's 636. My initial thought is to somehow get back into the setup area where I can use disc utility and erase the whole thing and then start over but 1) I don't think it's going to work even if I could get back there 2) I have no idea how to get this thing to reboot into that mode 3) I can't get the boot CD out to even try to restart to see if this thing did what it was supposed to, SO NOW I AM TOTALLY STUCK! I have not called Apple Care back because quite frankly they were useless the first time. I have a call into the repair guy but who knows how much help he will be. In the mean time, I have a million things to do and a computer that isn't working - Whoever said Apples never have issues needs to be seriously censored!
A few other notes: I use Time Machine Editor to run my backups weekly. It was set up that way from the get go by an Apple rep who came to my house to get us up and running. Editor should not effect the way that time machine does its work, so I doubt there is relevance but thought it worth mentioning.
One other note is that the Apple Care agent tried to have me do something called a "Source" something or other from the disk utility screen but when she realized that my backup file (shown by date) contained many other sub files (11-27-12/MacintoshHD/MyNamesIMAC/etc.), it was not possible to run this operation - thus we aborted. Sorry I don't remember the name of the process and unfortunately now can't access that option to go find it.
If you can help me, I would be eternally grateful! I am open to having a phone conversation if you are willing to give me your email to mail you my number. I have so much work to do this week and this was the last thing I needed. Did I mention this was supposed to be EASY?
I used to be quite the geek with my PC - still on the learning curve with the mac but not enjoying it. I am fairly tech savvy and I can follow instructions for a step by step solution if you've got one.

I got a recall and had the drive replaced. I have retored 3 timesa dn even had apple do the job and it is still not right. I still can't get a simple ghost of the data from time machineback tot he new drive.
This is Apple's explaination as taken from their web page.:
Restoring your entire system from a backup
If you are restoring a backup made by a Mac to the same Mac
With your backup drive connected, start up your Mac from the Recovery system (Command-R at startup) or Mac OS X v10.6 installation disc. Then use the "Restore From Time Machine Backup" utility.
Note: If "You can't restore this backup because it was created by a different model of Mac" appears when restoring a backup that was made on a different Mac, follow the onscreen instructions.
I even posted this information on the community and apple removed it... because they don't like the:
Off-topic or non-technical posts
Non-constructive rants or complaints
But here is my experieince:
Take in 27iMac running 10.6.8, 5-7 days, what a joke, my boss will be happy to pay for a week without working. Finally get, "if you have TM back up, 3 days." Get machine back with 10.6.3, hit the R recovery, click TM back up, runs for 2 hours, reboots, looks great. Box up take back to office... update to install - OH NO, still running 10.6.3. Updates crash with no specific error on install, BUG PROBELM, nothing runs.
Call Apple... after hours, tells me to boot using 10.6.2 disk, wipe, reinstall OS, udate to 10.6.8, THEN do the restore. GREAT! Only thing 10.6.2 DVD won't read... now back on phone... take back to the store, Genius says, he'll ix it just like it was. PROMISES it'll be fixed.
Pick up next day, supposedly, booted to disk, wiped drive, reinstalled, updated to 10.6.8 and THEN did the RIGHT restore... Looks GREAT... apps run and 10.6.8 OS. Back to the office... NOT RUNNING right!!!... fonts messed up, drop box app needs new install, cocktail needs upgrade, Fetch not working, memorized paths gone... back ups locked out of permissions... ***!!
4 hours on phone with apple and still no rsolution - to missing "settings". Seems there are THREE WAYS TO RESTORE (according to apply tech)... Running MIGRATE ASSISTANT and being able to choose your files, including settings, "R" RESTORE after they load a new OS... or NOW WAITING for them to send me a bootable 10.6.3 disk and then boot from disk, w/o installing OS and doing a restore from TM. I think this is done via the disk Utilties application.
So now can't back up without doing a full 400 GB back up since permissons are screwed and possibly destroying any good back ups... can't work, like having hands tied behind back. WAITING for solution! Very upset!!!
I did my first restore just like they said and now an 10 days without proper machine. Just FYI. I thnk I am going to make the store do the tech work so I have somthing to fall back on.

Unable to restore from Time Machine Backup

Hello,
My system recently crashed after removing the Boot Camp partition for Windows!
But No problem because I have everything backed up on my Time Capsule!
But actually there is a problem... I inserted my Mac OS X 10.5 Installation disk and tried to restore from a backup done on Mac OS X 10.6.1...
After 3 hours it told me that the restore was sucessful but when I restarted, a grey screen appeared and told me to restart again... And I keep getting that screen each time I try to boot.
I tried to repair the disk using disk utility but still getting the problem!
Can it be caused because the backup was made on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.1) and I am trying to restore using a Leopard disk (10.5)?
Thanks in advance.
Mathieu
Message was edited by: matappassamy

Tobstar007 wrote:
I had the exact same issue, and thought I was safe with my computer backed up. After failed attempts to restore with the 10.5 disk I got my 10.6 Snow Leopard disk back off my friend. I erased the hard drive and reinstalled Snow Leopard, thinking I could use the migration assistant. Not so, since I had renamed my hard drive from Macintosh HD to a different name, there was but one backup I could choose from which was 10.5.6 or something like that and that was right when I first got my computer. So now I thought: oh now I have Snow Leopard installed on here and I have the Snow Leopard disk, restoring should work. Six hours later it was at 71% telling me it could not restore files. THIS IS INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING. So right now my computer is yet again going through the unneccessarily arduous journey of erasing it's hard drive and restoring from a backup of 10.6, not 10.6.1 which was made in September. Any help with this failure of Time Capsule and Time Machine would be appreciated. I had to type this on my iPhone since I don't have any computer at the moment. :'(
Try doing a full system restore from your TM backups. See the instructions in item #14 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.

During upgrade to Lion on Macbook Pro the upgrade stops at OS utilites after rebooting asking to restore from time machine backup or install new copy

My Daughter is currently upgrading her MacBook Pro to OS X Lion. During the upgrade the system rebooted and then stops at the OS X Utilites menu. I have installed this same upgrade on My MacBook Pro and the family iMAC without issue. Did the upgrade encounter a problem? The only options are to Restore from Time Machine Backup, Reinstall Mac OS X, Get help, or Disk Utility.
I'm not sure how recient the backup is on the TimeMachine for her system and she is concered that she may loose a lot of updates she has made to iTunes and iPhoto.
Please help.

I have 8 GB of RAM, but would that even matter during install? Performance once installed and running sure, but I questiong whether the installer would demand that much more, or why it would affect mountain lion when restoring from a time machine backup.

My MacBook Pro recently shut down on me all of a sudden. When I restarted it, it popped up with a gray box with 'OS X Utilities,' then listed various options such as 1. restore from time machine backup, 2. reinstall OS X, etc. what do I do now?

My MacBook Pro recently shut down on me all of a sudden. When I restarted it, it popped up with a gray box with 'OS X Utilities,' then listed various options such as 1. restore from time machine backup, 2. reinstall OS X, 3. get help online and 4. disk utility. what do I do now? I have not backed up to Time Machine in a few days, so I'm not sure I should restore from time machine backup, is there something else I can do? Help!

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?

Time Machine cannot find internal backup disk.Lost disk image in Finder for internal backup volume. OS 10.7.3.

Lost disk image in Finder (Desktop) for backup disk on Intel Mac Pro OS 10.7.3. Time Machine cannot find the internal backup disk. The volume is grayed out in Disk Utility, though it CAN verify the volume. How do I get it back on my desktop?

First, restart the Time Capsule by disconnecting the power adapter and reconnecting it. If other devices on the network can see it, you can skip this step.
From the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences ▹ Network
Click the lock icon in the lower left corner of the window and authenticate to unlock the settings, if necessary. Click the Advanced button, then select the TCP/IP tab in the sheet that drops down. Click Renew DHCP lease.
Try again to back up.

Restoring from RMAN tablespace backup ; Few questions

11.2.0.3/RHEL 5.8
We have a RAC DB which is used by more than 20 applications. One schema for each application and one tablespace for each schema.
We have a schema with 130gb in size. All Objects in this schema use a single tablespace MCS_DATA.
This weekend we are applying some changes involving DDL, Code and Data .Usually we take an expdp backup of the schema before the activity starts and later if something goes wrong with script deployment we'll revert to old state by dropping the schema and doing an impdp from the expdp backup.
Question1.
Can we do an RMAN tablespace only backup and if something goes wrong with script deployment can we drop the schema and the tablespace and then create an empty schema and then restore from the tablespace backup ?
Question2.
If the above is possible , can you explain how it is going to work out because we are essentially plugging (restore,recover) in a tablespace to the database. Any potential problems ?
Question3. If the above (Question1) is possible, will restore/recover of this tablespace require a downtime for the entire DB ?

Tom;
If you are talking about RMAN TSPITR then yes you can. See - Purpose of RMAN TSPTIR in Backup and Recovery User's Guide E10642-03.
The problem with TSPTIR is bulk. You need a lot of disk space to create a copy and then data pump the information out and back in. I just tested this on 11.2.0.3 and its slow. RMAN created a script which produced an AUX instance and did the data pump, but I had clean up afterwards. If it errors out you can have an AUX instance hanging out in the background.
For TSPTIR you will need an area on the disk to server as an auxiliary destination large enough to hold what you are recovering plus the SYSTEM, UNDO and TEMP tablespaces.
I would probably look at Transportable tablespaces as a possible option too.
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E25054_01/backup.1111/e10642/rcmttbsb.htm
E10642-03 has a section for recovering a tablespace in chapter 2. The Tablespace must be offline, but the database can be up.
This uses "restore tablespace" and "recover tablespace" commands. You would perform this type of recovery when you are say missing a datafile. You can recover any tablespace except SYSTEM and UNDO with this.
Data Pump might be an option too, but given your tablespace size I would have worries about recovery time. Oracle lets you set compression
and a limit to each file produced.
expdp TABLESPACES=YOUR_DATA dumpfile=DATA_PUMP_DIR:ts_dumps_%U.dmp LOGFILE=DATA_PUMP_DIR:ts_dumps_log.log parallel=2 filesize=10G compression=ALL
Given the size of your database a better option might be something like Data Guard as your recovery time would be brutal.
Best Regards
mseberg

Unable to restore from my icloud backup

I backed up my 3gs via iCloud and purchased a new 4s. I was expecting to be able to restore from my iCloud backup, but when i tried, it said there was no backup information. I did reset the 3gs before attempting to get the restore started on the 4s. Could that have deleted my backup? I don't think it should have, but I'm not sure why else my iCloud backup is gone. It's screwed me pretty bad. I lost a lot of information!
Help!

I had the same problem, too (but when switching from 4 to 4S).
Reason: The iPhone 4S had firmware 5.0.1, whereas the older iPhone 4 was updated to 5.1 already. The backups are incompatible and hence not shown!!
Solution: First update the 4S to the same (or newer) software version, then restore from the backup.
The update is possible without using iTunes, just update "OTA" ("over the air") from within the iPhone (General -> Settings -> Software update)

HT1414 I'm trying to restore from an earlier backup but my iphone only shows the most recent. I'm on Windows Vista and found the backup folder. If I delete the recent files, will it force the iPhone to backup from the next older file? Why doesn't it show

I'm trying to recover a file and the app company said to restore from an earlier backup. My iPhone only shows the most recent backup. I've been searching the net for answers - I found the back up file and date sorted them (over 6mb of files). How can I get my iPhone to restore from an earlier backup?
I am on Windows Vista so I don't have Time Machine.
I have backed up the backup folder so if I mess it up, I have it in a separate place.
Can I just delete all the files with todays date in that backup folder and have it forced to the next oldest date?
Why doesn't the iPhone show a list of the least several backups.
Info:
iPhone 4S
Software version 5.1.1
Backed up to computer through iTunes (not iCloud)

As you backup the iPhone in iTunes, it overwrites the last backup. Files are kept as they are changed, so that would explain how you get different dates in your backup folder. The only backups that are saved and not overwritten are the ones done just prior to a restore. You do have the option to go back in time on a Windows computer, however depending on the last time you set a restore point in Windows, it could be back further than you are willing to go.

Reliability of restoring from a disk image vs from a "normal" backup file

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