Restoring a Lion Time Machine back-up to a Mountain Lion iMac.

I have a Time Machine back-up that was backed up on an iMac running Lion. I'm now buying a new iMac and it will be running Mountain Lion. Will this cause a problem if I try to restore my new computer with my time machine back up that was done using Lion? Do I need to do anything before I plug in the backup? I can’t update my old iMac because it died and Apple said it would cost several hundred dollars to fix it.

Nick,
Thank you for the reply. I’m a relatively simple MAC user. I don’t do a lot of stuff on my Mac other than pictures, videos and documents… simple things. Very little third party stuff was on my Mac.
When I booted my old machine I know there was a screen asking for me if I want to use a time machine back up to transfer data to my new iMac, at least there was in Lion. I used that feature when the HDD went bad in my old iMac. It was very easy. Do you know if I can use that same feature or do I have to do something special because it is a different OS? I don’t want to go back to Lion. I just want to make sure it will recover my old stuff easily.
Again. Thank You!

Similar Messages

Restoring from a Time Machine back up: iMac can't find them

A series of set backs after initially attempting to update Pages to be consistant and usable across my devices. iMac required me to update to Mavericks to be able to download the latest Pages update. After doing this, my iMac failed to reboot - just stuck on the white apple screen. This happened again next tie I attempted a Mavericks installation. So, I tried to restore from a Time Machine back up. After restarting in recovery mode I selected Restore from Time Machine back up - message reads "Searching for Time Machine back ups" (and hard drive is plugged in and switched on) but nothing is found.
How to enable the connection to the TM back up?
How to install Mavericks in this situ?
Thanks!

It may be that you can't do a full-system restore because system files were inadvertently excluded from your backups. But it could also be that the backups aren't usable at all. Since you don't know and can't check at the moment, you should assume the worst.
If you want to preserve the data on the startup drive, and it's not already backed up, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is not fully functional. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
1. Start up from the Recovery partition, from Internet Recovery, or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.” The article refers to starting up from a DVD, but the procedure in Recovery mode is the same. You don't need a DVD if you're running OS X 10.7 or later.
2. If Method 1 fails because of disk errors, and no other Mac is available, then you may be able to salvage some of your files by copying them in the Finder. If you already have an external drive with OS X installed, start up from it. Otherwise, if you have Internet access, follow the instructions on this page to prepare the external drive and install OS X on it. You'll use the Recovery installer, rather than downloading it from the App Store.
3. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, start the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
4. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.

I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library

I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library?

If you have a considerable photograph and/or movie collection you may want to consider off loading those to the EHD too. Here are Apple's article showing how handle iTunes & iPhoto libraries.
iTunes: library on EHD
iPhoto: How to move the Library to EHD
Roger

HT4491 Trying to restore from a Time Machine back-up

Had bad HD replaced on my iMac by Apple. I updated the OS to Mountain Lion, boot in restore mode, start the restore from the last back up, get the "restoring..." dialog box with the progress bar, but it just keeps running and never finishes. Neither the iMac internal drive nor the external drive I use for Time Machine back-up seem to be doing any read/write activity. I even let it run over night justto see and nothing. Any ideas on what might be going wrong?

Had bad HD replaced on my iMac by Apple. I updated the OS to Mountain Lion, boot in restore mode, start the restore from the last back up, get the "restoring..." dialog box with the progress bar, but it just keeps running and never finishes. Neither the iMac internal drive nor the external drive I use for Time Machine back-up seem to be doing any read/write activity. I even let it run over night justto see and nothing. Any ideas on what might be going wrong?

I restored from a Time Machine back up and now my Creative Suite 4 gives me error 150:30

I have the same problem when I migrated CS4 to a new Retina MacBook Pro from a Time Machine drive. I get Error: 150:30 when I try to launch Photoshop CS4. The License Recovery Tool does not seem to work with Mountain Lion. I cannot reinstall the software from disc unfortunately. That was too many moves ago and the discs are no longer available. I don't even think the installers will run with the current OS.
Any help would be much appreciated.
All the best,
Tom

I have branched this off to a separate discussion.
TomWolsky in general it is best if you install the applications instead of restoring them from Time Machine or using the Migration assistant to copy them from one computer to another. You can try the steps listed at Error "Licensing has stopped working" | Mac OS - http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/error-licensing-stopped-mac-os.html. This may allow you to resolve this difficulty.
If it doesn't I would recommend formatting and only restoring your documents and settings from the Time Machine back up. You can download a fresh copy of your installation files by following the directions listed at http://prodesigntools.com/download-adobe-cs4-and-cs3-free-trials-here.html.
You can also find the serial number if it is registered to your account by following the steps listed at http://forums.adobe.com/message/3987968#3987968?promoid=KBHJW.

How do I factory reset my Macbook Pro and then restore using my time machine back up?

Hey guys,
My Macbook Pro has slowed down & had more and more random crashed recently and a friend suggested doing a factory reset. My Macbook is about 3 1/2 years old now so it's about time I did something and this always used to work for me on PC's.
I've kept a completely up to date time machine back-up since day 1 (I'll do another immediately before the reset.) and would rather use that to restore all my files. Will I have to reinstall all my apps with this? (Thats fine if I do, it would just be nice to know first) How do I do the factory reset & how to I restore from time machine afterwards.
Many Thanks
MegaBeaker

First obtain an external hard drive to back up to. Go to your system preferences and look under Time Machine. Select your external hard drive as your backup drive then start a full backup. Then follow these steps provided by Apple:
In the menu bar, choose Apple menu > Restart. Once your Mac restarts (and the gray screen appears), hold down the Command and R keys.
Select Disk Utility, then click Continue.
Select your startup disk on the left, then click the Erase tab.
Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the Format menu, enter a name, then click Erase.Important: Erasing the disk removes all the information from the disk. Be sure to back up the information you want to keep to an external device.
After the disk is erased, choose Disk Utility > Quit Disk Utility.
Select Reinstall OS X, click Continue, then follow the onscreen instructions.

Is it possible to restore a Yosemite time machine back up to Mavericks?

I downgraded from Yosemite to Mavericks but I only started backing up when I was running Yosemite so once I downgraded from Mavericks I found that time machine couldn't restore my backup. Is there anyway I can get around this or do I just have to upgrade back to Yosemite? The reason I downgraded by the way was that Yosemite made my Mac a bit slow and laggy. Thanks

I would recommend you to restore your files manually (in other words, going to the backup drive and copying the files you want to your Mac's hard drive), because Migration Assistant might mess up everything.
If you are going to install OS X Yosemite again, do not restore the backup or you will get those performance issues back. Instead, restore your files manually as described above.

Trying to restore Time Machine back-up from WD MyBookLive - whats the Password?!

Hi all,
my son has a Macbook Pro running Lion. Yesterday it hung when downloading the 10.7.3 update and wouldn't reboot properly.
We logged in via safe mode and managed to sort this out, however I was initially looking at doing a restore from his time machine back-up. I had booted the recovery partition and chosen the 'restore from a time machine back-up' - then it had prompted me for a username and password to gain access to the back-up...
When I set up the Time Machine Back-ups I always have selected (as recommended by Apple and Western Digital) the Guest user. Therefore I have no idea what the username or password should be??? I've hunted on the web for any kind of answer however theres no certain answer...
I'm hoping someone out there will know what username and password it is expecting? Is this from Time Machine, or a default username/password set by the Western Digital NAS???
I hope someone can help - my time machine backs up both my own, my wifes and my sons macbooks, its all very well having the back-ups but not worth it if I can never get access to them when I need to!
thanks in advance

I think you are not restoring your files in the correct way.
If what you want to do is to restore a complete Time Machine backup, you have to do it in OS X Recovery, so first hold Command and R keys while your Mac is starting up. Then, choose the option to restore a Time Machine backup, and follow its steps.
If you want to restore individual files, you cannot restore that type of user files because you are using them. Instead, you can restore individual files in your user folders. Read > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

Having trouble restoring old files from an external Time Machine back-up to a new internal hard drive...HELP!

O.k. So my main hard drive died on my iMac and I had to replace it. I have my old system backed up on my external with Time Machine. How do I access it to get my old files back on my new hard drive? I have read multiple forums and I have yet to find a solution. I was told that when I first turn the computer on and get to the third screen, it would ask me if I wanted to restore from a previous back-up. It did but it didn't show my external until I went through the set-up and got to my home screen. The drive showed then. It also asked to install updates...and I did. So everything is up to date. I have not turned time machine on yet because I'm affraid that if I do, it will erase my old back-up on my external. I tried using the Migration Assistant in Utilities and all I get is the spinning wheel when I tried to get that to work. So now I am here asking for help. I'm not very hopeful that I'm going to be able to get all of my old files back... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for the video link. I did it pretty much exactly the way the young man explained. The one thing I didn't do was click "customize" as he does and unclick the multiple language support and he also clicks "rosetta" to support older programs. I wonder if that's the issue? The guys at Macmall told me that I would need to update the o.s. before I restored. I did that originally but have since (as mentioned before) erased the main drive. I noticed that when he does his install, his external drive does not show up on the list in which you want to install the o.s. on... should I unplug my external? I'm just trying to look at ever detail. I know the recovery file is there. The one thing it (the external) did say before I started posting here was "in progress". I'm not sure what that means? I promise I'm not an idiot. I consider myself an above average user. I usually help other that have issues... but I've yet to restore from a Time Machine back-up and I'm looking forward to learning how to do it.... the right way. I appreciate all of the advice. I have some pretty important files on my external back-up. I am really hoping that this is possible. I'm beginning to think the external is where the issue lies. The "in progress" next to the file name concerns me. I know there's a lot of data on the drive because it's nearly half full. So there's stuff there....
Deep breath in...... reeee laaaaaaaxxxx

Access mailboxes in time machine back up

My hard drive crashed and I had to replace it with a new one.
On my previous drive I was running Mountain Lion, I upgraded to Maverick on the new drive.
I have my previous drive backed up on time machine, but was unable to restore from a time machine back up, before installing Maverick (files corrupted)
I absolutely need to get back my old mailboxes from Time Machine !
How do I access the hidden library in my time machine back up?
Now that I have Maverick, it is not entering my Mountain lion back ups when I enter time machine.
The back ups are of course vivible on my finder desktop on the back up drive.
Is there a way to access the hidden library in the time machine back up without entering time machine?

I am accessing through the TM interface. The TM interface has multiple folders on this particular weeks back-up. Some I can access and get to the files inside and some I do not have access to. Unfortunately, the folder I want to access and find the single file contains over 200,000 files. If I were to restore the folder, it would overwrite three months worth of files and make them outdated. I need to get access into the folder and restore that individual file.
Is there a way to restore on a second external drive to keep out current files in tack?
Brian

Restoring from purple time machine

Hi,
I need help restoring a purple Time machine back up.
My computer froze so I turned it off. It then wouldn't turn on. It just displayed the grey spinning wheel. I took it into Apple and they inspected it and said that I needed a new cable inside the machine. They then put new software on the machine and said I could pull down my backups from Time machine on my harddrive.
When I went on the hardrive I couldn't use time machine as it would not pick up any of the backups. I then started a new user and went on migration assistant and it wouldn't find the backups. However, when the hardrive is plugged in I could view the backups but they are light purple and not grey.
I took the mac into apple and they manually transferred documents and email.
My main worry is that my mac holds loads of emails that are not on the server so they found these and put them into an IMPORT folder in the Inbox. I have then dragged these over to my mac.
However, I am missing pictures etc, and annoyingly my signatures on my email. They have made these folders visible on the backup folder using a tinker tool but when I go into them it says I do not have permission to view the folder and they have a red circular on them.
Is there no way I can access these light purple back ups to just get back to where my laptop was on my last backup (23rd Dec?).
All I want to do is have my mac back to the way it was on the 23rd as I have a lot of work info etc that I need in the same place.
Any help would be incredibly appreciated!
Kind Regards,
Tom
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4). Time machine on Hard Drive

See section E.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Getting Time Machine back up to a Sparsebundle on external HDD (Drobo)

Hey,
I've been chasing this issue around for a while but can't seem to find the answer.
There are a lot of resources out there describing how to get your Mac to backup to a Sparsebundle on a NAS, and more resources telling you how to write protect the Info.plist file so that Mac OS doesn't resize the image to take up all of your NAS.
However I've got a Drobo connected directly to my Mac Mini. The Drobo pretends to have a 16TB drive so that you can add storage as and when you need it.
I am already using it to back up my MBP over the network to a Sparsebundle and until recently I was using the same scheme (a size limited sparsebundle) to back up the Mac Mini that the Drobo is connected to.
I achieved this by following the excellent directions on http://anitechtalk.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/time-machine-dns323/ (one of the only sites that mentions the new way that Apple handles Time Machine Sparsebundles)
However this has recently stopped working and no matter what I do I still cannot get my Mac to see the Sparsebundle as a TimeMachine aware 'drive'- instead it just backs up to the root of the '16TB' Drobo- and at some point it's going to get rather full.
Argh.
(And yes, I know that the other solution is to re-partition my Drobo to have a small partition at the start of the disk for Time Machine to use- but it's too late for that as I've already got 1.85TB of data on there and I doubt that I can re-partition that without losing all of the data.)
Can anyone help me get Time Machine to accept my Sparsebundle as a 'disk' that it can backup to?
Thanks in advance.

Thank you for the video link. I did it pretty much exactly the way the young man explained. The one thing I didn't do was click "customize" as he does and unclick the multiple language support and he also clicks "rosetta" to support older programs. I wonder if that's the issue? The guys at Macmall told me that I would need to update the o.s. before I restored. I did that originally but have since (as mentioned before) erased the main drive. I noticed that when he does his install, his external drive does not show up on the list in which you want to install the o.s. on... should I unplug my external? I'm just trying to look at ever detail. I know the recovery file is there. The one thing it (the external) did say before I started posting here was "in progress". I'm not sure what that means? I promise I'm not an idiot. I consider myself an above average user. I usually help other that have issues... but I've yet to restore from a Time Machine back-up and I'm looking forward to learning how to do it.... the right way. I appreciate all of the advice. I have some pretty important files on my external back-up. I am really hoping that this is possible. I'm beginning to think the external is where the issue lies. The "in progress" next to the file name concerns me. I know there's a lot of data on the drive because it's nearly half full. So there's stuff there....
Deep breath in...... reeee laaaaaaaxxxx

My iPhoto Library was deleted from my computer, not enough space for a time machine back up?

My entire iPhoto Library is gone, inaccessible, doesn't show up in finder. I tried to restore my last Time Machine back up but it says that I don't have enough space on my startup disk. In order to create space I deleted everything nonessential and moved all of my essential folders such as documents, photos, videos, everything, etc. to my external drive, then deleted them from my hard drive. I emptied the trash to make sure that everything was wiped. I tried to do the Time Machine back up of my iPhoto Library again and is still says I don't have enough space. I looked at my storage under About this Mac, and it says that 120.35 GB of my current computer storage are photos, however, I don't have ANY photos on my hard drive at all. I don't know what to do because I can't delete applications and there is literally nothing else I can delete from my computer, so I don't understand how 135 GBs of storage is being used up.
Any ideas? Could there be somewhere my photos are hiding? I just don't understand how this makes any sense, or why my library got deleted in the first place for that matter.

Search for your photos in Spotlight.

HD failure with neither time machine back-up or OSX install working

Hi,
I recently had the OEM HD fail on my Mac book pro resulting in the blinking folder question mark on startup. I purchased a new intel SSD to replace it and it installed it in the laptop. I then performed the command + r on boot and went through the system recovery from network. This seemed to be working fine at first and I was able to open the disk utility after load, I created a single partition on the SSD and then was able to verify successfully. I then closed this window and tried to restore from a time machine back up on an external hard drive. About 30 seconds after it started, it returned an error saying that it was unsuccessful and to restart the computer. I accepted and then it rebooted.
I power cycled the system and again tried the command + r on reboot. This time I first erased the new SSD from the disk utility and then proceeded to create the partition. This time I tried the option to load the OSX and did not plug in the external HD. It began to download from the network and looked to be working fine. However, at some point about 1.5-2 hours later it looks like the system reset itself and came up with the flashing folder with a question mark.
When I power cycled the system for a third time to check the disk again it gives a white screen and command + r does not do anything. I tried resetting the PRAM which the system responded to the option+ command+ p+r and rebooted but it still returns to this white screen. In order to check if it was the SSD that was the problem I opened the computer again and disconnected the SATA cable from the SSD. Then with the SSD disconnected at boot I was able to attempt a system recovery from network using the command + r.
Does anyone have any advice or did I just end up ruining the $200 SSD?
Thanks in advance.

Followed the directions on this page and it worked!
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1102423
Part One - Turn on SSH (in the admin panel)
[1] Go to to http://mybookworld.local
[2] login: username will be admin, password will be whatever you have setup. If you can't remember it should be in your Mac OS X keychain (Utilities > Keychain Access, search for "mybookworld"). If you have not changed if from the default the password will be admin as well.
[3] Switch to advanced mode.
[4] From the System tab, pick Advanced.
[5] Enable SSH Access, and click submit.
[6] Click on the network tab and then the LAN button
[7] Make a note of the IP address
Small, maybe obvious, but nevertheless important point: For the install to work, your NAS needs to be connected to a router with internet access.
Part Two - Install netatalk2.2
[8] Open Terminal.app (Utilities > Terminal)
[9] Enter the following command (substitute in 127.0.0.1 for the actual IP address you noted down in step 7), then hit return:
Code:
ssh [email protected]
[10] When prompted, enter the ssh password (will be welc0me).
[11] You are now going to download the installer. Enter the following command, then hit return:
Code:
wget http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/local--files/netatalk2-2-on-whitelight/install_netatalk.sh -O install_netatalk.sh
[12] Once completed, you will need to run the installer. Type:
Code:
sh install_netatalk.sh
[13] You will be asked a number of question during install, answer yes to all. When asked about the "DHX2 login process", I opted to install the modified version, so I can confirm it works.
[14] Once the box has restarted, you should be able to connect to your afp shares and continue to use Time Machine.

Browsing Time Machine back-ups in Finder, disappear....

I have a 3TB Time Machine Back-up drive connected to my iMac with 256+2TB drive.
It backs up my 256GB, 2TB drive, and a 2TB External drive with my documents, etc.
It backs up everything fine, however I notice when I browse time machine in the Finder - for instance - i select the folder with the backups, my Mac name, and a random date.
From there, I see Three Folders - one of each of my drives (256, 2TB, 2TB External). When I select the 2TB external back-up folder, sometimes it shows all the folders/documents then quickly disappears/vanishes...though its in there. Or sometimes it will show them all then only show a handful of the files in there...
Even though theyre on the back-up drive and taking up space...why are they vanishing through the Finder?
They appear to be all there when I browse with the Enter Time Machine interface. but sometimes its easier to navigate via Finder on the TM Drive...

laarafromvancouver wrote:
I have . . . antivirus software
Many of those are notorious for interfering with all sorts of things, including Time Machine.
The two recommended by our malware guru (see Thomas Reed's Mac Malware Guide) are free: Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition and ClamXav.

Restoring a Lion Time Machine back-up to a Mountain Lion iMac.

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