Restoring time machine on a different mac

I'm trying to help a friend. Hi macbookpro died. He can't afford a new one right now, but has an old g4 cube. So now he wants to move the data from the dead laptop to the old g4. Fortunately he ran Time Machine backups to an external firewire drive. So I thought it would be easy enough for me to restore this data for him in a format the g4 could read, but so far no luck.
My first thought was to use migration assistant to copy the accounts from his time machine backup to my mac. But when I select to use Time machine backup or another attached disk, it does not see his time machine backups!
So then I thought, I'll just use the OS install disks to restore his backup to an extra disk I had hanging around. When I do this it lists his disk as containing a Time Machine backup, but when I select it it tells me that no osx system backups found.
So now I'm not sure what to do. Perhaps he does not have a proper time machine backup (although apparently when he plugged the disk into his laptop he just selected the default which is to use it for a time machine backup.
There is a directory on the disk called Backups.backupdb which appears to contain his backups, but most of the stuff there is just links.
He also used this disk to backup files from his g4 (simple drag and drop),
could this somehow effect the time machine backups?
Any idea how to get the data out of his time machine backup - or confirm weather or not it is actually there?
I'm no familiar with time machine - I usually run 10.4, just installed 10.5 on a spare disk to try and help him out.
Thanks

dknightd wrote:
I'm trying to help a friend. Hi macbookpro died. He can't afford a new one right now, but has an old g4 cube. So now he wants to move the data from the dead laptop to the old g4. Fortunately he ran Time Machine backups to an external firewire drive. So I thought it would be easy enough for me to restore this data for him in a format the g4 could read, but so far no luck.
My first thought was to use migration assistant to copy the accounts from his time machine backup to my mac. But when I select to use Time machine backup or another attached disk, it does not see his time machine backups!
So then I thought, I'll just use the OS install disks to restore his backup to an extra disk I had hanging around. When I do this it lists his disk as containing a Time Machine backup, but when I select it it tells me that no osx system backups found.
It sounds like he may have excluded system files from backups.
don't use Full system restore to restore backups from one computer to a different one, especially if one computer is intel and another one a PPC. that will not work.
So now I'm not sure what to do. Perhaps he does not have a proper time machine backup (although apparently when he plugged the disk into his laptop he just selected the default which is to use it for a time machine backup.
There is a directory on the disk called Backups.backupdb which appears to contain his backups, but most of the stuff there is just links.
links? do you mean they look like alaises? that means that you are looking at it from a Tiger machine. You shouldn't. whatever migration option you are using you should migrate to a leopard one.
He also used this disk to backup files from his g4 (simple drag and drop),
could this somehow effect the time machine backups?
no, that shouldn't matter.
Any idea how to get the data out of his time machine backup - or confirm weather or not it is actually there?
as I mentioned you should look at the drive from a leopard machine. try this control-click on Time Machine in the dock and select "browse other TM disks". see if it lets you brows that TM disk.
I'm no familiar with time machine - I usually run 10.4, just installed 10.5 on a spare disk to try and help him out.
Thanks

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I have one 1T Western Digital backup drive that works well with Time Machine and my MacBook Pro. I now want to back up my wife's MacBook Air using Time Machine on her Mac and want to know if I can use the same WD external drive or if I need to get a 2nd back up drive? If I can use one external drive for the two Macs do I need to do something special on the drive or will Time Machine do it automatically?

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I'm going to put a new HD in my MacBook Pro.
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Thanks again Joe.
One last question. Once I've transferred my files from the Power Mac's Time Machine disk could I select that disk in MacBook Pro's Preferences as it's Time Machine backup disk?
(Effectively stop using it as the Power Mac's backup disk & continue using it as the MacBook Pro's backup disk).
Backing up new files on the MacBook Pro to the disk, but still be able to 'go back in time' & restore files from the Time Machine disk (backup up over time on the Power Mac).

How do I view Time Machine from a different Mac?

Using Pondini's excellent tutorial, I navigated to the Time Machine backups from an earlier Mac (on the same "Time Machine" partition of an external HDD.)
First, I was at the level of Macintosh HD/Users, and I could see my earlier Mac's users, but they had the usual red 'No Entry' circle against most of the Home folders so I couldn't see what was in them.
Next, I quit TM and went to the folder I actually wanted (Mail Downloads) in Finder and tried again. This time, though I had option-clicked for other TM backups, it showed me the folder for my current Mac's backup (there's only been one or two so far). When I used the TM timeline slider to go back to that same folder on my other Mac, TM refused to budge. It stayed on my current Mac's window.
Basically, because of the permissions issue, I cannot view the data on my older Mac's TM backup using my current Mac, even though in theory I can option-click and get the window showing the earlier TM, and then select it and go into TM. I should point out that on the other Mac, I had a different account name and password - would this be the reason?

Pondini wrote:
There may be a way to get access to the backups, but it will take some finagling.
It sounds like you got a new Mac, right? And set it up from the old one, or its backups, and didn't use Setup Assistant when it first started up, but created that new user account first, then used MIgration Assistant. If so, the pink box does explain exactly why you're in a pickle.
Post back with details of how you got where you are, how many accounts are where, whether you've done new backups, etc.
It's a bit more complicated than that. I had a new Mac which I set up in the usual way (via a previous Time Machine). Then I let the new Mac go out of my possession for far longer than I'd intended, and meanwhile used an older Mac, where I made many changes to things like iTunes, iPhoto, documents, games, videos, etc. For reasons of space - a HD half the size - and knowing I'd get my new Mac back again, I slimmed down that older Mac with fewer Users, trimming out a lot of older stuff, and a different main account.
When I got the new Mac back, I obviously couldn't use TM to update it due to my 'slimming down' operation on the older Mac (I'd have updated many things but also lost a lot too). In the event, iTunes was updated with little difficulty, iPhoto was updated over the network, likewise all my documents and stuff. The main problem was getting my emails and downloads updated which wasn't at all straightforward. That's where TM backups on the recent (older) Mac came in - I'd use TM to fetch over the bits and pieces that were still missing on my less recent (but newer) Mac.
On my old Mac I've been using for months, I only had 3 users, one of them Shared. On my new Mac I have 7 Users, but it was only my main (admin) account that mattered. I've actually found that I can access my old/recent Mac on the network using File Sharing rather than TM and have got what I want that way. Now I want to get the old Mac off my desk and get some space back. Once it's in a cupboard, I don't want to have to heave it out again in case I find I've forgotten an essential item. That's why I wanted to make sure I could access it via TM.
The main account on my old Mac will be either 501 or 502. On my new Mac, those numbers belong to 1) what was once my main account on a G5 which I had to abandon due to logic board problems, and 2) a deleted account that doesn't exist anymore.

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Although you can restore messages from a Time Machine snapshot within the Mail application, it generally won't work with messages that were saved by an obsolete version of Mail. In that case, you have to use an alternative method.
Enter Time Machine and scroll back to the snapshot you want. Select the mail account folders you want and then select Restore ... to... from the action menu (gear icon) in the toolbar of the snapshot window. Restore the folders to the Desktop, not to their original location.
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File ▹ Import Mailboxes...
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*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
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Last night my iMac hard drive crashed. I couldn't retreive any data as the Hard Disk was just not reading anything. I have since then reformatted the disk and have reloaded the OS.
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The logic board is fried on my apparently backed-up, out of warranty MacBook Pro (MBP), which was running Lion. I don't have enough time to figure out the steps and get it done. I need some help here.
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I can't think of any problems this would pose, except maybe the loss of settings that arent compatible with the OS of the backup. if you choose option 1, it may make it easier to upgrade the iMac to Lion that way it receives that backup more seemlessly.
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kal137 wrote:
Hi There, Macbook newbie here, got my macbook for xmas and I am totally converted.
I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of how to set up a 'system restore' type of thing similiar to the windows system restore via time machine.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
In addition to the info offered by Jolly Giant, Time Machine is rather different from the system restore feature of Windoze.
First, a bit of terminology: +Time Machine+ is the software built-in to recent Macs that does backups and restores. It can back up to an internal HD, an external HD, or a +Time Capsule,+ which is a piece of Apple hardware that combines a wireless router and hard drive.
Technically, this forum is for +Time Capsules;+ there are separate forums in the Leopard and Snow Leopard sections for +Time Machine.+
Time Machine backs-up +*your entire system+* -- OSX, apps, configuration, users, settings, preferences, data, etc. It also keeps previous versions of things you've changed or deleted (so it needs more space than what's used on your system).
You can then easily browse the backups and restore selected items, if you've deleted or changed them in error, or they somehow got corrupted.
Or, if something goes terribly wrong, you can also restore your entire system to the exact state it was in at the time of any backup, even if that's a previous version of OSX. That's the procedure Jolly Giant referred you to in the FAQ Tip.
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
and perhaps browse the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum.
See especially #1 and #5 there before getting started.

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Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Of course. Note that you can restore a Time Machine backup on all the Macs you want, always that the Mac uses the same or a newer OS X version than the one that had the Mac you used to make this backup.
Also, you can back up different computers to the same Time Machine drive. In this case, Time Machine will create different folders in your Time Machine drive for each computer, so one Mac backup won't conflict with the other computer backup.
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I would like to restore a Time Machine volume to a hard drive not installed in the computer it has backed up.
I have an iMac 24” with a failing drive. It will eventually need to be replaced.
I have my Time Machine back up for this computer in a Voyager Docking station.
I would like to have Time Machine “restore” the iMac’s data to a drive in another Voyager Dock running from a computer other than the iMac involved.
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Time Machine has been working just fine, but in the last week or two it has given up the ghost. I reset the connections to the drive, and it will basically save a few bytes of data and then hang.
Although Apple originally announced, prior to the release of the first 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Stations (AEBSn), that it would support Time Machine backups to AirPort Disks, they removed that option before they did finally release the base station for sale.
Since then, Apple has posted (as you have noted) that they DO NOT support Time Machine backups to AirPort Disks. As far as I know, they have not changed from that position and those who do these backups find that they become corrupted over time. Sorry, but it sounds like you just confirmed that for yourself.
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Restoring time machine on a different mac

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