Replacing hard drive. Time Machine. OS HELP

I plan to upgrade my hard drive to an ssd and am currently backing up the whole system with time machine to a passport. Now my question is my macbook pro is from 09'/10' so the software disk that came with it is old. When i go to restore everything will time machine bring me back to maverick without the install disk. Im just confused on what i have to do after i replace the hard drive. Also, will my apps be backed up on there like photoshop and illustrator. I dont have disks for all my apps. Ive been searching the web and havent found what i need. If there is any links you know of or info it would be much appreciated.
thanks!

Similar Messages

Restore iPhotoLibrary specifically from EXTERNAL Hard drive Time Machine back up?

My laptop Photo Library is corrupted somehow. I tried to restore from a prior in Time Machine on laptop and made the mistake of not saying to keep BOTH copies, but after trying for 3 hours of telling me it was doing it through various windows, a little one popped open saying something about permissions and it opened an old iPhotoLibrary from 2 years ago! ... I do have that one now and am copying it off my laptop as fast as I can to FLICKR
cuz APPLE has become a PHOTO sinkhole... (We are talking 20,000 pics folks with scanned in family pics from 100 yrs ago!)
I think I have a good copy on my External Hard Drive Time Machine back up from about 3 weeks ago. How do I use that to Restore from
or should I just wait for this PHOTOS thing to come out?
NEXT Question is there a convenient way to split it into MULTIPLE ones..eg KEEP old stable photos in one or more.
and use another for all the new ones not editted or sorted yet? I do see there is a new Option under iPHOTO/File menu to just switch
libraries but, of course, you cant even see that if your Library wont open!

For TM help post in the forum for your OS - and see https://www.apple.com/support/timemachine/ and http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html and http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Depends on undisclosed information
With the current OS and iPhoto you switch library using the switch library command - with any version you can switch libraries by holding the option key down while you launch iPhoto which brings up the select library window
And generally it is not a smart idea to have multiple iPhoto libraries - it generally has no advantages and makes things much more difficult and complicated and often leads to user errors that cause major problems
If you want to anyway the most convent way to split libraries is to use the paid version of iPhoto Library Manager - http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ -
LN

I have stored everything on my Macbook pro in a external hard drive (Time Machine) Now that we have "wiped the machine" I am told I can start it over and load ontent--apps, docs, etc from the hard drive, just plug it in, find the time machine and what?

I have stored everything on my Macbook pro in a external hard drive (Time Machine) Now that we have "wiped the machine" I am told I can start it over and load ontent--apps, docs, etc from the hard drive, just plug it in, find the time machine and what? I need to know what to highligh, what to click on.

hirogliffix,
take a look at this Apple page — in particular, the “Restoring data from Time Machine backups” section and its “Restoring your entire system from a backup” subsection.

Hard drive failure! New hard drive/Time machine backup/iPhone questions

Hello,
I have a 2011 MacBook Pro who's hard drive failed (rather acutely too, I do use disk utility to check it's health regularly) and I bought a replacement to install (SSD!). I have a bunch of questions but have only found partial answers in searches. Maybe it's best to list them:
1. I'd like to do a fresh install of the OS X using OS X Recovery because I'm concerned my Time Machine backup is partly corrupted. I hadn't updated to Mavericks, will I be able to install Mountain Lion? If not: will this be a problem with my backup files?
2. Say the OS X Recovery works, how do I use Time Machine to restore things like my iTunes library/iMessages/email/iPhoto library etc? In other words: just the data I can't get any other way (I hope it's not too corrupted). And/or should I use my iCloud backup on a few of these (iMessages/contacts)?
3. Do I need to set up the new OS X install with the same account names/home disk name etc. for the restored backup files to function?
4. Is this going to f'up iCloud or vice versa?
5. Finally, how do I sync my iPhone to the "new" computer without erasing the iPhone (which had an iOS update since my last backup to Time Machine). Or do I have to restore the iPhone too.
6. How come Apple doesn't have a mobile theme for their website yet?
Any help would be much appreciated,
Matt

Do you still have the original System Reinstall DVD set that came with your Mac?
If you created that Lion external drive you have from YOUR Mac, when Lion was installed on it, and it also contains a Recovery HD partition you can use that to boot to the Recovery HD and reinstall Lion on the new drive. And or Clone that external to the new internal drive you installed.
Right since your Mac came with Snow Leopard you can't use the Online Internet Recovery system to reinstall Lion, as your system didn't originally come with Lion, but you should still be able to boot to it to do diagnosic things like using Disk Utility, going to the Net to get help and even Restoring the system from a Time Machine backup. But you will get an error if you select Reinstall Mac OS X. The firmware update is usually applied with system updates.
If you created a New Time Machine Backup when any of the Download Only version of OS X were installed on your internal drive Time Machine, the system, Copies over the files needed to boot the system from that backup drive. If it was a care over backup from when Snow Leopard was installed is might or might not be bootable. Only way to tell is to connect it and at startup hold down the Option key to get the Boot selection screen, IE The Boot Manager screen, and see if it shows up as a Boot Source. If it does thenn it contains the files needed to get to the Mac OS X Utilities, IE the Recovery HD files.
What you should do is Boot the system from either the Time Machine backup, if it is bootable, or your External that has Lion on it, The Recovery HD if that drive contains a Recovery HD, or your Original Snow Leopard reinstall DVD that came with your Mac and then try to Restore from your Time Machine backup drive.
If that fails to restore your system properly then nyou should reinstall Snow Leopard and the iLife Apps from the Original Discs then upgrade to Mt Lion which will be in the Mac App Store under your Purchases area. Then maybe you can restore your files from that Time Machine backup.
scardanelli wrote:
I've had a bunch of issues with my computer (you can look at some of my other questions on these forums) which, to my mind anyway, seemed to be finally given a diagnosis when my HD crashed. It may be paranoia but there have been enough problems that I'd rather do a clean install to be on the safe side.
I have an early 2011, shipped with Snow Leopard.
I was under the impression that Time Machine can't be used as a boot drive and the OS X Recovery is a firmware update (on my computer) or hard wired in (on later computers). I might be wrong. I was planning on using the internet recovery, the HD failed right after I got some password protected files unencrypted and onto an external drive (was that necessary?) but wasn't sure if it's a problem if it installs Mavericks.
So Setup Assistant will configure my accounts the same and I don't need to worry about that? That's a relief.
Thanks for the lengthy response.

I am trying to move my old external hard drive (time machine ) to a new one

I have tried to move my old external drive time machine to a new external drive:
1. have formated the new time external hard drive
2. I have unlocked and ignored the drives ownership
3. I have turn of the new hard drive and them tried dragging the file (backups.backupdp) to my new external hard drive
when I do that a message come up that says "this volume has that wrong case sensitivity for a backup"
What does this mean and how do I fix it?
Thanks
Denise

Although the documentation says you can copy Time Machine backups in the Finder, it's very slow and sometimes doesn't work at all.
Launch Disk Utility, open the built-in help, and search for the term "Duplicate." Follow the instructions. All existing data on the destination volume will be erased. That shouldn't be a problem, because you don't want to mix backup and non-backup data on the same drive anyway. Turn Time Machine OFF in its preference pane while copying the volume.

Replaced internal hard drive, time machine doesn't recognize as same volume

Howdy,
The hard drive (call it drive "X") on my iMac (one of the 2005 models) was dying so I had it replaced. I rebuilt the new drive (drive "Y") from my most recent time machine backup (from external drive "A"). I am now having problems with one of my backup devices, in that time machine doesn't recognize that the new disk is conceptually the same thing that had been backed up before (same volume name).
More details... I rotate my backups monthly through three external drives (I store the most recent offsite). After the disk replacement and restore process, I continued to use that backup drive (drive "A") without noticing any problem. Then it came time to rotate my external drives, and time machine doesn't find enough space on the next backup drive (drive "B"). Presumably this is because it doesn't realize that the drive I am backing up ("Y") is a copy of the drive that had previously been backed up on "B" ("X").
Is there any way to convince it they are the same? Or am I in the same boat as this poster:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2770362&tstart=0
Basically I just want to verify that I am in that same boat before I remove old backup files on "B". If I do decide I need to remove those, are the instructions linked in thread 2770362 correct, or are there better ones?
Thanks for any help,
Bob H

Actually, the backup I deleted above was the backup for the new internal drive. Apparently TM had created the (incomplete) backup during the failed attempt that ran out of space on the backup device. Since the new internal drive had the same name as the old internal drive, I didn't initially realize that's what I was deleting. Not that deleting it causes any harm, but it didn't address the original problem of freeing up space on the backup device.
Not to worry though. I've figured out how to get at the backups for the old internal drive, and am in the process of deleting those. I was about to follow the instructions in your troubleshooting items E3 and E2, but upon attempting to enter time machine I stumbled into the right place. Since I had previously told TM to do no backups (because there was still not enough disk space), and since I'd left the backup device connected, when I pulled up the TM menu from the menu bar, the usual "Enter Time Machine" menu was replaced by "Browse Other Time Machine Disks" (or perhaps "Disks" was "Backups"). This then gave me a list of the machines that I'd backed up on this backup device (in my case machine names and internal drive names are the same). Of course one of those was for the old internal drive, and after choosing it I roughly followed the same course of action as I did a few days ago, to initiate deletion.
I also saw how I could delete each of those old backups individually, but decided against that as I did not expect it would free up enough space. My expectation is that nearly all the space is shared among all the backups for the same source drive, since relatively very little changes between backups.
Bob H

Saving files on the same hard drive time machine is using

I was wondering how I go about saving files other than backups on the hard drive I purchased. If you can help it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

If you haven't started your Time Machine backups yet you can partition your new drive, using one partition for Time Machine and the other for file storage. If you assign partition #1 to Time Machine you can reclaim the space on partition #2 for Time Machine at a later time.
You can follow the directions in this article. for formatting/partitioning a drive for Time Machine but you want to end up with two partitions rather than one. People with PPC Macs should substitute Apple Partition Map for GUID when following the directions.

Retrieving pictures off of my hard drive (Time machine) from Iphoto

I apologize if this issue has ben addressed, but I searched and havent seen this same question. Now, I have been using time machine with my LaCie to back up my Macbook. One of my main reasons is to back up 9,000+ pictures that I have on here. Now, i want to make sure they are on my hard drive before I start to delete them for more room, but I cant seem to access them on my hard drive through time machine or any other way. When I click on Iphoto just the application icon enlarges, and thats about it. I tried to go through pictures, and nothing!
Id greatly appreciate any help anyone can give me!
Happy 4t of July by the way!! :o)

Several questions there and here are some answers:
I figured out by searching for a specific pic I found it in the Data file under iphoto library.
Then my guess is right. That's the thumbnail. The full sized pic is kept in the /Originals folder.
Maybe my real question is how do I access the files once its on my External hard drive?!
Doesn't make a difference which drive the files are on. Here are some of the ways you can access your files with iPhoto
For 10.5 users: You can use any Open / Attach / Browse dialogue. On the left there's a Media heading, your pics can be accessed there. Apple-Click for selecting multiple pics.
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
To upload to a site that does not have an iPhoto Export Plug-in the recommended way is to Select the Pic in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export and export the pic to the desktop, then upload from there. After the upload you can trash the pic on the desktop. It's only a copy and your original is safe in iPhoto.
This is also true for emailing with Web-based services. If you're using Gmail you can use iPhoto2GMail
If you use Apple's Mail, Entourage, AOL or Eudora you can email from within iPhoto. With 10.5 you can access the Library from the New Message Window in Mail:
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
If you use a Cocoa-based Browser such as Safari, you can drag the pics from the iPhoto Window to the Attach window in the browser.
Or, if you want to access the files with iPhoto not running, then create a Media Browser using Automator (takes about 10 seconds) or use THIS
Other options include:
1. *Drag and Drop*: Drag a photo from the iPhoto Window to the desktop, there iPhoto will make a full-sized copy of the pic.
2. *File -> Export*: Select the files in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export. The dialogue will give you various options, including altering the format, naming the files and changing the size. Again, producing a copy.
3. *Show File*: Right- (or Control-) Click on a pic and in the resulting dialogue choose 'Show File'. A Finder window will pop open with the file already selected.
Regards
TD

AirPort Extreme & USB Hard Drive Time Machine Backups

Hi everyone. I'm a brand spanking new MacBook Pro owner and am looking at ways to backup my machine and to save my films, photos and files on a wireless network that is available to everyone in my home.
I'm the first to admit that I'm not the most computer savvy person but I'm okay with the basics. I've read through a lot of forum sites and the community pages on here and most seem to recommend Synology products. They do seem very good but are a good price too once you've bought the hard drives to go with it. I already own an external hard drive so I thought that maybe the AirPort Extreme would be the ideal choice as I know that it can be connected and files can be saved wirelessly. I did read tonight however that you cant backup your macbook using time capsule which is a little bit annoying.
I have two questions really, firstly is it the case that time machine won't backup to an external hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme and secondly, how important is it to back up through time machine? I'm what you could describe as a low level user and will only be using it for simple tasks such as watching/saving films, storing and editing photographs, surfing the web and saving the odd pages and numbers document.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
Simon

I have two questions really, firstly is it the case that time machine won't backup to an external hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme and secondly, how important is it to back up through time machine?
The very latest 802.11ac version of the AirPort Extreme DOES support Time Machine backups to attached external USB HDDs. All other 802.11n models are not supported by Apple for these types of backups. A number of folks have been successful doing so, but most typically post here about data corruption issues.
Time Machine is not the only backup strategy, but it is very convienent. I would recommend that your overall backup strategy includes at least two types of backups: 1) Incremental ... like the ones Time Machine supports, and 2) Disk cloning. The latter is very effective for quickly getting you back up and running if your Mac suffers an internal HDD loss.

Western Digital Hard Drive & Time Machine

I have backed up all my files from my Mac Book on my external hard drive but it has packed in after 5 months and it will not mount.
WD have said to send it to them and they will provide a replacement which is great.
the only issue I have is what happens to all my Mac Book files contained on the hard drive if WD get it to work again ?
Are they able to see these files from my Time Machine because some have some important financial info on them ?
What would you do ?

This is a question I have faced before when I held confidential research data on my TM drive.
Once WD receives the product, they will likely take the hard disk out and try to figure out what went wrong. Perhaps they will be able to fix it with a single part, run a quick format, and send it back into service as a refurbished product. Somebody could receive the drive and potentially recover any data if traces of it still exist on the disks.
I had an external that went the same way yours did and I chose to simply destroy it because I just didn't know what would happen to the data on it. It's all about how important that information is and if you are willing to risk where it could potentially end up. The fact is once you send it off, you do not know what will happen to it.

New hard drive-Time machine trouble

I exchanged my hard drive from a 160GB to a 500GB recently. All went well with the installation of the old programs and transferring all my old files back from my time machine.
Now a week has gone by and I want to back up my computer to the time machine and the computer can't find it. It's plugged in and all seams to be on but it just can't to find it.
I really don't want to screw anything up here and loose my old backups in the time machine so figured better ask for help before something goes terrible wrong..
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thank you
Sophie

Soffan73 wrote:
Now a week has gone by and I want to back up my computer to the time machine and the computer can't find it. It's plugged in and all seams to be on but it just can't to find it.
Eeek! A week? If you make many changes, you really should back up more often.
Are you getting a message? If so, what?
Try just re-selecting the drive via Time Machine Preferences. If that doesn't work, do a "full reset" of TM per #A4 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
I really don't want to screw anything up here and loose my old backups in the time machine so figured better ask for help before something goes terrible wrong..
Good plan!
You may lose some, or many, old backups anyway, though; the new drive will be backed-up in full, so if there isn't room for that, TM will delete old backups trying to make room. If your TM drive isn't at least 2.2 times the size of the data on your system, TM will probably delete all but the last backup, then fail for lack of space. If that's the situation, consider getting a larger external HD for your backups.

New hard drive - Time Machine

I will be replacing my hard drive and will back up with Time Machine. Currently my Launch Pad is a mess with unwanted applications. How to I keep these unwanted applications from being copied back to my new hard drive?

There really is no way to select which applications you want to restore. Either delete them before running Time Machine, or delete them after restoring from Time Machine.
If a program has an uninstaller utility, use it. If not, just drag it to the Trash.

Disappearing hard drive - Time machine

I recently bought a Toshiba 3TB USB 3.0 hard drive for use with time machine for my iMac, running OS 10.6.8. Unfortunately Time Machine backups frequently fail because it can't find the disk.
When I look in finder the disk is not available, however when I run disk utility it's there, but greyed out. When I select the disk and mount it it works again for a while, however I usually find it's disappeared again by the following morning.
An unreliable back up disk is not that helpful. Can anyone tell me what's going on?
Note the disk is connected via a hub, but so are my ipod and 2nd external hard drive, and they don't suffer from this problem.
thanks,
Jamie.

Me2 i.e I also recently bought a Toshiba USB3 ext. HD and find the same behaviour. The thing goes to sleep within a few minutes. If transferring files to it, I have to make sure it is spinning before I do so, otherwise the transfer fails. Also open diskimages can unmount when it goes to sleep and cannot be remounted except after a force quit which I dislike doing.
The only reason I bought it was because I could not find a Firewire drive as that is now old tech. But I need old tech for my old iMac (2008). I have other external drives (Firewire) that work well and now think in hindsight I should have bought extra at the time.
Perhaps Jamie you need to scout around and try and find an alternative ext, drive. Go with a brand that has worked well for you in the past, if you can find something equivalent.

Erase Hard Drive;Time Machine Backup

I recently discovered that I have some bad directories in my main hard drive which is causing some performance deficits on my computer. I always use an external hard drive exclusively for Time Machine, and it backs up several times a day. If I wipe my hard drive, will I be able to select my Time Machine drive and restore everything I had prior to erasing the disk? In my Time Machine preferences, I have not excluded the backup of any kind of file. Will my computer (all settings, preferences, etc.) be exactly as it was before the disk erase if I back up from my Time Machine drive? I just want to make sure that I don't lose anything? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-P.

Hey there,
Yes, if you backed up everything and restore everything, your computer should seem as exactly as it was. More on restoring from Time Machine can be found in the link below. Hope this helps.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html
B-rock

Booting from External Hard Drive (Time Machine)

I just learned that my hard drive is failing. I haven't backed up my data for a while, so I bought a new 1 Terabyte Seagate Drive for Mac. It's one of the new models that don't need a power cord; you just connect it to your computer.
Anyway, a guy at the Genius Bar told me that I can use Time Machine to create a virtual clone on an external drive. I later realized that I might be able to boot up with my external drive and work with my cloned hard drive if my internal hard drive. I've done that with Carbon Copy Cloner before.
Anyway, that's my main question - can one boot up a MacBook Pro on a virtual clone created by Time Machine instead of using the internal hard drive? If so, how do you access it? I think I recall having to hold down a key (Option?) while the computer is booting up, which forces it to give you a choice of hard drives.
One more question: I've backed up some files on my new external drive - about 200 GB in several folders. My internal hard drive is 750 GB, of which about 180 GB is free. In other words, I need about 775 GB space on my external hard drive (570 GB for a virtual clone of my internal drive and 200 GB for the files I've already copied to it. Since it has 1 TB of space, that should be a breeze.
But can I use an external hard drive when it already contains files? In other words, will enabling Time Machine wipe out the files I've already copied to my external drive? Ordinarily, it wouldn't be a problem; I'd simply be replacing some folders with ALL the contents of my internal hard drive, including those same folders. However, I'm a little conerned because my hard drive is failing. I'm just worried that Time Machine might erase the files on my external drive, then poop out before it's finished creating a virtual clone.
So those are my main questions - can I enable Time Machine without wiping out files already copied to an external hard drive, and, once I've copied my entire internal hard drive to the external drive, can I boot up with the external drive and work on it? Thanks.

Hmmmm...I don't know what you mean by "restored," but it sounds like I'm out of luck (my OS X version is 10.7.5). It sounds like I need to purchase another external hard drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable clone on it, right? And could someone remind me how you access multiple hard drives when booting a computer? I remember you have to hold down a particular key(s) while it's booting.
Thanks.

Seagate FreeAgent External Hard Drive & Time Machine

I have a 1 TB Seagate FreeAgent Go external hard drive that I use for Time Machine backups. However, I get one or two backups on it and it suddenly becomes "Read only" and won't allow Time Machine to write to it. My user name is listed as having read/write permissions. I go into Disk Utility and Verfy the disk. It comes back saying it needs to be repaird, so I click Repair Disk and then after several minutes of repairing it comes back with an error that the disk can't be repaired and that I should backup the contents and reformat.
I have reformatted it a couple times and each time this happens once I attempt to use it for Time Machine again. At times it won't even mount.
Is this a bad drive and I should contact Seagate for replacement (it is only a couple months old) or is it something I'm doing/not doing? Is it Lion (though it was kind of flaky even when I was running Snow Leopard)?
I have a MBP (early 2011) running Lion with 8 GB RAM, 1 TB internal HD.

Now I have that sinking feeling.
It is plugged directly into the MBP. No power supply as it is a "portable" HD so it's powered from USB.
My sinking feeling is coming from the fact that since day one of owning this MBP (I got it in March 2011) the built in card reader has had problems. When I put a card in, it mouts and reads fine, but if I reach around and move the MBP holding onto the bottom of the case near the card reader slots (the natural place to grab it to pick it up) I get a message that I've ejected the car improperly even though the card is still seated and hasn't move. This leads me to believe that there is some kind of problem with the internal connections to the motherboard. Now with this added symptom of the disk not mounting I'm more concerned about motherboard trouble. Thankfully I have Apple Care.
But, the other thing is, when I connect the EHD and it doesn't mount/is not recognized by Time Machine, it does show up in Disk Utility as being there--indicating it connects fine as far as cabling etc--but it won't mount from Disk Utility, and I can't do disk repair. The only thing I can do is reformat it and then it will work for a while before going back through the whole won't mount, have to format procedure again. So I'm really stumped since there seems to be no clear indication if the problem is related to the card reader symptom or if it is a bad drive.

Replacing hard drive. Time Machine. OS HELP

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