Restoring from Time Machine with no Leopard install CD?

I've been having dreadful problems with my 2006 MacBook recently, which resulted in it being sent away for repairs. I got it back today, and to my surprise and delight it had Leopard installed.
My recent problems have made me realise how much I need a bootable backup. I had been planning to use SuperDuper to make a backup system using an 80GB firewire drive I just bought, but since I now have Leopard, I thought I could just use Time Machine.
However, I now realise, Time Machine doesn't make bootable backups. Booting from an install DVD and then restoring would be a perfectly good solution for me, but the problem is I don't have a Leopard install CD to boot from! And I assume booting from my Tiger CDs would not help, since they won't recognize Time Machine formatted files. And SuperDuper isn't compatible with Leopard.
So how can I make it so that my Time Machine backups are any use to me if my computer won't boot from the hard drive?

I thought it was probably a mistake -- it was certainly a surprise -- but I don't plan on complaining. I chose to interprent it as a gesture of apology for how many things have gone wrong with my hardware in the past year (I'm on my third hard drive, second DVD drive, second main logic board, second set of connectors... thank goodness for AppleCare)
I really want a restore-able system... I guess I'll have to think about how badly, whether it's worth my paying for the Leopard DVD or going back to Tiger!
Thanks for your response - it's good to be sure what is and isn't possible.

Similar Messages

How to restore from time machine with Lion preinstalled?

Yesterday I got an iMac and OSX.7 Lion was preinstalled. I set up a time machine disk and performed a full backup, and it will work for file histories, but if my main disk fails how do I restore from this time machine backup?
I never had to restore in Leopard or Snow Leopard, but I believe the procedure was to insert your optical install and/or rescue disk and from there was an option to restore from a time machine backup. If I don't have a rescue disc, as no media whatsoever came with the iMac, how do I perform a restore?
I think if you upgrade to Lion it gives you a recovery partition but I don't think I have that with Lion preinstalled. At least I can't find it. Ideas?

Sorry, I RTFM'd and found this: "To open the Mac OS X Utilities application: Restart your computer while holding down the Command and R keys". From there you can restore from a time machine backup. Sorry for the post.

Restore from time machine running snow leopard

I just had my Seagate HD replaced due to a recall. Got my iMac back with the OS installed from apple and a clean machine. Trying to restore to my previous state through TM but it won't allow me to access the recovery promt upon startup. (Command+R) The only other option given was to run the OSX installer disk and go through the utilities option to restore by TM. It sounds like the computer starts reading the disk at startup but then just freezes at the gray screen with the apple logo. Any other alternatives or similar cases?

rkaufmann87 wrote:
I'd strongly recommend Pondini's Time Machine article called Restore Time Machine Backups.
I have followed that article but those methods are not working. As stated, it will not enter recovery mode upon startup so I can access Recovery HD. When I insert the disk as well as start it with C on startup it freezes at the gray apple screen.
Linc Davis wrote:
What version of OS X were you running before the recall?
Snow Leopard 10.6.8
They installed it back to the same version, however the install disk I have is for 10.5.6 if that makes a difference.

Restoring from time machine in snow leopard

I recently sold an iMac on ebay. It was an iMac 10,1 with OSX 10.8.4 I purchased the Snow leopard discs from apple and rebooted the computer using those...
The buyer recently sent me a message on ebay saying this:
"I have been trying to restore my backup via Time Machine, and the instructions tell me when the Installer disc opens to click on Utilities, then choose Restore System from Backup. But when I click on Utilities, it asks me to Restart, everytime. Do you know if I am doing something wrong?"
Can someone hepl me/him?

Instead of restoring his/her backup from the OS X disc, install Mac OS X. After installing Mac OS X, it will ask you to restore files, so follow the steps

Correct way to restore from Time Machine backup - Lion clean install

I did a clean install of Lion, and am wondering — what's the correct way to restore files in my Home folder to my new installation?
For example, I simply dragged over my iTunes folder from the "Latest" Time Machine backup.
Perhaps instead I should restore from the backup differently? For example, open the ~/Music folder, then open Time Machine.app, and restore that folder through that?
I always thought that manually dragging the "Latest" backup from the disk should do the trick the same way? Or an important question is — can some files be somehow excluded?
I did everything through dragging, and haven't noticed problems... BUT, perhaps I should go back and re-do everything the "right" way if there is one?
(I purposefully avoided doing a Restore, as I didn't want any of the caches, Applications and Library items restored — wanted to start fresh.)

For convenience mostly. I use the Terminal a lot so I have lots of "dot files" that are at the root of my home directory and hidden.
One problem is that many of those programs have data in Music, Photos, etc all organized by databases somewhere in ~/Library. You have to make sure to get them re-joined. It can be done. You just have to be careful with it. If you lose your iPhoto archive in the process, the first thing someone is going to ask is why didn't you use Migration Assistant.
Until recently, I performed all my major MacOS X upgrades using this manual procedure and, for me, the extra hassle was worth the cleanliness. I have lost a couple of software registration codes that I couldn't ever get back. C'est la vie. I would keep my old Library folder around for quite some time until I was sure I wouldn't need anything out of it. These days, I'm too busy and too lazy. I just use one of the automatic methods.

Restore from Time Machine backup doesn't install working system folder

A routine restart turned into a major problem this morning. I'm runnning 10.8.5. on a MacPro tower and a 480GB SSD for a boot disc. Been running fine for the past 2 years.
I restarted the machine and when I came back to it I was dropped into the Recovery / OSX Utilities screen. This was unexepected!
Tired restarting again, and it gave me the circle+line through icon ( / ) a couple of times and then the apple as it apparently located the Recovery partition.
Running Disk Utiliites "Repair" and "Repair Permisions" on the SSD came back with flying colors, so I assume it's not a hardware issue. That said, multiple reboots and nothing. I was basically dead in the water. I only have a boot USD stick, which just launches you into recovery mode.
Knowing that I was going to be out for a few hours and that I have regular Time Machine backups of my drive, I opted to perform a System Restore on the main SSD, using a backup from earlier this morning.
After 4+ hrs of "restoring", I optomistically rebooted the machine. It's still gave me the "system folder not found" icon, and booted into Recovery mode.
This time I quit the application and specifcially went to select the SSD as a Startup Disk and it's not even showing a 10.8.5 folder on the SSD!!
I just booted up my Mac Pro in target disk mode and plugged it into my MacBook Pro to examine the drives. I can see all 4 drives on my MacPro, including the boot SSD. My boot disk appears to contain all the files it had before, but won't boot! I can verify that the backups are the exact folder structure that I had before, so what's going on?
Should I:
Wipe the SSD again, and install OS X from my laptop? Can I do that through Target Disk mode? Or just do that through the Recover Tool?
Some people with similar issues were told to perform clean installs and use migration assistant to pull the files over. But I really would like to know why using Time Machine backups aren't doing what they are supposed to – the files are all there!
Is there something I can do to my restored SS
Obviously this is a desperate time for me, so any assistance is greatly appreciated.

So far, the closest to a solution has been that I've since reformatted the drive. Installed a fresh copy of 10.8, and now I'm trying to migrate over all my content from the Time Machine backup using the Migration Assistant. In an hour I'll find out if I just wasted the last 2 hrs.
I guess I have a "Quad Core", I have two many machines to keep all the specs straight. I've been using it for over two years. It's not an OS issue.
I'm still blowaway by the fact that I could actually just restore from a Time Machine backup. When connecting to the TM via the system utils, it should be handled like a byte-for-byte clone. I think that's a rather major failure on Apple's part, but not the last one of late.
I still am not confident enough in Mavericks to take that plunge.

Restore from time machine after hard drive install

I just had apple replace my hard drive on my Imac. I backed up everything with my external hard drive My Book. Tried to do a restore with Time Machine and it won't do it. I get a message that come up that says "Time Machine can't be modified or deleted because its required by Mac OS X. What steps am I missing to restore with Time Machine?

Hello, I personally don't use TM, but...
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imagine something not being covered there.

After full restore from Time machine, my TM hard drive won;t mount

I got my macbook pro back from a logic board repair and restored it fully from Time Machine using my leopard install disc.
Took a while, but it has installed OK. But some applications weren't restored and now the Time Machine drive won't mount on the Macbook at all. When I open up time machine - and try to choose a backup disc nothing comes up.
The drive shows up on a PC when i connect it (but won;t read it as its mac formatted) so I'm pretty sure there;s nothing wrong with the drive.

Also, be aware that TM thinks you got a new Mac, not a new logic board. Thus you won't see your TM backups in the normal way. You'll need the (badly named) +*Browse Other Time Machine Disks+* option (see #E2 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum).
In addition, when you start doing new backups, TM will start a whole new "sequence," as if it were a different Mac. See #C8 in the Troubleshooting Tip for options.

HT201250 I recently replaced my 2009 Macbook Pro's hard drive. I had the Apple store upgrade the OS to Mountain Lion while it was being repaired. I want to restore all of my old files and data, if I restore from Time Machine, will it revert to the old O

I recently had to replace my 2009 Macbook Pro's hard drive. I had the apple store upgrade the OS to Mountain Lion while it was in being repaired. I want to restore all of my old data and files. If I perform a restore from Time Machine, with a date prior to having the hard drive replaced, will it revert back to the old OS?

No, it won't revert to the prior OS X but you you may have third party apps installed that were compatible with Lion that may not be compatible with Mountain Lion.
App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps - App compatibility and feature support for OS X & iOS
After you restore from TM, check HD > Incompatible Software

Cannot Reinstall OS X Lion OR Restore from Time Machine

With Firevault enabled, I attempted to reinstall OS X Lion from Recovery Mode. After being asked to enter the password to unlock the encrypted 'Mactinosh HD' disk, the reinstallation began. Everything seemed fine until the install process was supposedly finished, then a window popped up explaining that there was an error and to try again. I tried again and the same thing happened. I also tried to restore from Time Machine with no success (the same thing happened). I opened Disk Utility via Recovery mode and verified/repaired the 'Macintosh HD' disk and its permissions, but the reinstall/Time Machine restore still fails. Then I erased the disk with Disc Utlilty, and attempted this again with no success. My computer no longer boots into OS X at all (it didn't even before I erased the disk via Disk Utility). It can only boot into Recovery Mode or Windows--I'm basically running a pretty overpriced Windows PC.
I am using a 21" iMac with an Intel Core i5 processor, CPU @ 250GHz, have 4 GB of RAM, and am (supposed to be) running OS X 10.7 Lion. Right now I'm using Windows 8 Consumer Preview x64 bit on a Bootcamp partition on the same computer if that matters to anyone. If there's any useful information I could provide to help you help me then please let me know! This is a pretty sucky issue that I'm having a great a deal of trouble and frustration with and any help would be very very appreciated.

Whenever I try to do this it says "Error trying to turn off encryption". The message does not offer much in the way of an explanation aside from that. Maybe that's simply an 'incorrect password' message? I entered my adminstrator password which works to unlock the drive, but apparently not to turn off encryption unless the error has nothing to do with my password. I opted to have Apple hold on to my Filevault restore key which I was too lazy to write down when I first enabled the feature, so if that is the password required to turn off encryption I suppose I'll need to call Apple Care to retrieve it. =/
By the way, the computer no longer boots into reguar Recovery Mode but now boots into internet recovery. Interestingly enough, another attempt at Time Machine recovery also appeared to work (saying that it was done successfully) but in fact it didn't.
Also, whenever I try to change startup disc to Macintosh HD it says "Error: Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed". Whenever I restart holding the Options key to view available drives/partitions, only Windows and My Passport (external hard drive) appear.

Failed Restore from Time Machine

My 3 time attempt to restore from my Time Machine external dive is not working.
Background: I have installed a 750GB hard drive, and have created 2 partitions, choosing my largest partition of 400 GB.
Last attempt, I installed my OS with the original disks,
Once installed, I rebooted from my install disk, and choose restore from Time Machine, it appeared to install, starting at 4 hrs left, and finished, and restarted, only to get the black screen telling me to shut down, and restart. That I have done 3 times, what am I doing wrong?

MN Tricia wrote:
Got it out and restoring now.
Yay!
It looks like it will be a while (9+ hours?) but hopefully this restore will work. Appreciate your help and crossing my fingers.
Don't put too much stock in the initial estimate -- they tend to fluctuate, often a great deal, as the restore progresses. How much was on your system?
You didn't mention where your backups are, but if you're restoring from a Time Capsule, via WIFI, I'd strongly suggest cancelling it and starting over via Ethernet. It will be 2-3 times faster than a good WIFI connection.

How to restore from Time Machine WITHOUT install discs using a second Mac

It's a question that is asked repeatedly all over the web by Mac users like me that bought in to Time Machine (TM) on the assumption that if their computer died one day it would be a piece of cake to restore from it, only for that day to come and then to be told "ahh, okay the first thing is to get your computers install discs..." (loud crashing sound of world falling around ears).
I've never been able to afford a new Mac and both of my machines were bought second-hand. Neither came with Leopard (both have Tiger and have been upgraded to Leopard via the net). This was never supposed to be a problem as I've been backing up with TM. However it appears that Tiger discs are as much use as an inflatable dart board when it comes to using TM. So I've been faced with the possibility of having to spend £130 (about two hundred Pres Sheets, Yankees) on the Leopard install discs just so that I can have the option of restoring from TM. Bonkers.
However after much nashing of teeth, a very long weekend learning all sorts of things about 'Target Mode', 'Single User Mode', 'Verbose Mode', 'Open Source 9' etc the following solution has worked without the need to go out and buy those over-priced discs...
What you will need:
1 broken Mac requiring restoration
1 second donor Mac running Leopard (or Snow Leopard so long as the broken Mac can run it)
1 firewire cable with the correct fitting at either end to attach both Macs together
1 Time Machine backup
Note: The following is for when you have given up trying to boot from your hard drive. In my case I couldn't boot in to Safe Mode etc. so was forced to format my drive and re-import everything. If you've read this far I'm assuming your at the same point as well and have tried everything else that's out there first.
Also - both my Macs are Power PC's so can't run Snow Leopard, so I can't say 100% this will work with SL (Intel) machines. From what I've read Snow Leopard will work with this procedure too, but if you've found differently please feel free to add your experiences below...
STEP ONE: Format the corrupt Hard Drive or replace with a fresh HDD
*Link the two computers with a firewire.
*If you're replacing your HDD, remove your corrupted hard drive from the 'broken' machine and insert a new one.
*Power up the broken Mac whilst holding down the 'T' key. This will start it up in Target Mode and you'll get a nice firewire symbol floating around that machine's screen.
*Power up the second 'healthy' Mac. This will be our 'donor' machine. When it starts up after a few seconds you will see the hard drive of the broken Mac appear on the donor Mac's desktop.
*Using your donor Mac's 'Disc Utility', format the broken Mac's hard drive (now's the time to partition it etc. if you want to).
STEP TWO: Clone your donor Mac
Your broken Mac is no longer broken and now needs a new OS. But you don't have the discs, right? Well get this... you can clone your donor mac on to your machine, even if they are totally different i.e. a laptop on to a tower.
*Again using Disc Utility, click on your donor Mac's hard drive. The restore tab appears as an option.
*Click on restore and drag the donor Mac's hard drive that contains the operating system in to the Source box.
*Drag the newly formatted hard drive on the broken Mac in to the Destination box.
*Click restore. Your donor Mac's hard drive will now be 'cloned' on to your no-longer-broken Mac. Once this is done, eject the first Mac's hard drive from your donor Mac's desktop. You no longer need the donor Mac.
Ta daa! Your machine now starts up happy and smily again. Time to restore all that stuff that's been sat on your Time Machine drive...
STEP 3: Restore from Time Machine using Migration Assistant
This is the really clever part that prompted me to write this piece in the first place. Time Machine IS accessible without those Leopard install discs you don't have. You need to use something called 'Migration Assistant'.
*Start up your machine as normal and you'll see it is an exact clone of the donor machine. Weird huh?
*Attach your Time Machine hard drive. It will show up as an icon on the desktop and because of it's size, you'll be asked if you want to use it as a Time Machine backup. Err, NO YOU DON'T! Click 'cancel'.
*Open Migration Assistant (if you can't find it just type it in to Finder and click). There are three options, the middle one being to restore from TM or another disc. Yup, you want that one.
*Migration Assistant will now ask you what you want to restore in stages, firstly User Accounts, then folders, Apps etc. It will even import internet settings
And that's you done. Let Migration Assistant do it's thang... altogether I had about 140gb to restore, so it wasn't exactly speedy. This wasn't helped by the fact that my TM hard drive is connected via USB (yes, I know). Just leave it alone and it'll whirr happily away...
Before I go - you don't have an option of when to restore from, and will restore from the last Time Machine save. At least then you should be able to access TM and go 'backwards' if you need to.
Also - for a Mac expert, the above will be up there with 'Spot Goes To The Farm' in terms of complexity. However, for the rest of us the above is only available in fragments all over the net. By far the most common response to 'how do I restore from Time Machine without install discs' is 'you can't'. If I'd found the above information in one place I could have saved a lot of hair pulling and swearing over the last couple of days, so forgive me for sharing this workaround with the rest of the world. Meanwhile your expertise will come in very handy for the inevitable questions that will get posted below, so please feel free to help those people that won't be sure if this solution is the right one for them. I'm no expert, I just want to help people that were stuck in the same situation (and looking at the web, there's a LOT of them).
Hope this is of use to someone, thanks and *good luck*!

Most maintenance and repair, restore and install procedures require the use
of the correct OS X install DVD; be it an original machine-specific restore/install
disc set or a later retail non-specific general install disc set.
By having an unsupported system, perhaps installed via an illegal download or
other file-sharing scheme, where no retail official discs are involved and the
initial upgrade was done by other means outside of the License Agreements,
you are asking us to discuss a matter of illegal installation and use of a product.
There are no legal complete OS X system download upgrades online; only bits
that are update segments to a retail or as-shipped machine's original OS X install.
+{Or an installation where a previous owner had correct retail upgrade discs, &+
+chose to not include them with the re-sale of the computer it was installed in.}+
However, to answer the initial question. To get and use an externally enclosed
hard drive in suitable boot-capable housing, and get a free-running Clone
Utility (download online; often a donation-ware product, runs free) you can
make a bootable backup of everything in your computer to an external HDD.
This is the way to make a complete backup to restore all functions to the computer.
The Time Machine has some limits, in that it can restore only that which it saves.
It does not make a bootable clone of your entire computer system with apps and
your files, to an external drive device. A clone can. And some of the clone utility's
settings can also backup changes to an external drive's system; if that other drive
is attached to the computer correctly.
Carbon Copy Cloner, from Bombich Software; and also SuperDuper, another of
the most known software names you can download and use to clone boot-capable
system backups of your computer's hard disk drive contents, are often cited.
However you resolve the matter of the running OS X system in your computer,
derived from what appears to be questionable means, is part of the initial issue.
Since you do need to be able to fix an existing installation by unmounting the
computer's hard disk drive and run the computer from the other (install disc or
system clone) while it is Unmounted; and use the correct Disk Utility version to
help diagnose and perhaps be able to fix it. You can't use a Tiger version Disk
Utility to fix a Leopard installation, and so on.
So, the situation and replies as far as they can go (since the matter does
constitute an illegal system, if it was arrived at without correct discs) is a
limited one. And file sharing of copied Mac OS X (and other) software is
also considered illegal.
And, one way to get odd malware and unusual stuff, is to get an unauthorized
system upgrade from an illegal source online. You never know what's inside it.
The other reply was not a personal attack; the matter is of legal status and as
you have a product with a questionable system, the answer is to correct it.
And if you want to save everything in your computer, make a clone to a suitable
externally enclosed self-powered boot capable hard disk drive. With older PPC
Macs, that would best be to one with FireWire and the Oxford-type control chips.
However that works out...
Good luck & happy computing!

Restoring from Time Machine AFTER install

My hard drive crashed, so i had to buy a new one (WD scorpio blue). I replaced it, then reinstalled from the install disk (10.4.10, Tiger). That was mistake one. What I meant to do was to restore from my time machine backups on an external HD. I also have the leapord disk that came with, which i forgot to install from, my second mistake. so my question is -- do i have to erase the hard drive and start back over to install from my TM back up, or can i do it either during the upgrade to Leopard or from Tiger?
Thanks.

Matt Clifton wrote:
Boot from your Leopard disk (with your TM drive connected), and go to Utilities - Restore from Time Machine Backup.
So, using this procedure will restore my MB onto a totally new hard drive with all my programs back intact along with any files?
If so, this looks like a great way to replace/upgrade a hard drive. Re "go to Utilities", is this folder or option from the Leopard disk?

Restore from Time Machine & OS X install not working

Mid 2009 Macbook Pro
Installed new hard drive, reformatted to GUID, hard drive is verified.
Booted from USB Recovery HD
Selected Restore from TIme Machine
Plugged in external, it shows up, click on it, back up from this morning is there, pick new formatted hard drive
Get error "An error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk. Restart your computer, and then try restoring again."
Do exactly that 3 times
Then try installing OS X
Get this error "An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again."
Try that 3 times
Reset PRAM
Tried both again same errors

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
First, are you running Leopard or Snow Leopard? Your settings at the bottom of your post say Snow Leopard, but this is the +Leopard > Time Machine+ forum, so I'm not sure which is right.
Did you do the full system restore, starting by booting from your OSX disc? If not, what exactly did you do?
Exactly what is wrong with Software Update? What happens, or doesn't happen?

Struggling to restore from Time Machine (2007 MacBook; Snow Leopard)

The hard drive failed on my 2007 MacBook. I had it replaced and the shop also installed Snow Leopard (this was what I was using prior to the fail).
I tried a restore from Time Machine and while a huge chunk of my new hard drive disappeared, I couldn't locate the files. I have since found them in the hidden /Volumes folder.
I have also learned that to do a full restore, I should have used my Snow Leopard install disk alongside the drive with Time Machine backups.
So...
1. Should I delete the restored file in the /Volumes folder and start again using the Snow Leopard install disk?
2. I want to upgrade to Lion (this is the furthest I can go with this MacBook). Can I do step 1 using a Lion install disk even though the Time Machine backup was created in Snow Leopard? (Confession: I'm not sure where my Snow Leopard disk is and I'm trying to avoid going through cupboards and boxes to find it)
3. is it laborious and risky to try to restore everything manually from the /Volumes folder? Where do I start if I decide on this route?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

I would try recovering the files manually first. If the result is unsatisfactory, then I'd boot up using the Snow Leopard DVD, run Disk Utility/Repair disk, erase and reformat the drive, and then install Snow Leopard. Reboot normally, and use Setup Assistant to restore from Time Machine. Completely update to 10.6.8 and then consider if you want to upgrade to Lion. There are no Lion disks - it is a download.
10.6.8 Combo Updater

Restoring from Time Machine with no Leopard install CD?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for