System Restore from Time Machine Back up and Mail

Hi
I have around 16,000 Messages in my Mail 3.2 Inbox. I use Gmail IMAP service. One thing I like about Mail is that next to all my messages there are these arrows that indicate whether I have replied to or forwarded a particular message and clicking on them takes me to my response to a particular email.
I need to reformat my MBP HD and want to do a system restore through Time Machine.
My question is, will Mail return to my current state (with all the arrows and tags) after I do the complete restore from Time Machine.
Any help on this is highly appreciated.
Cheers!

Mheck21 wrote:
I replaced the internal because I need more space, I'm not an expert, but I've done it before. I wasn't having trouble I was just running out of room and decided to upgrade?
Ah, ok, that rules that out.
I think it wasn't backing up because it was showing I had files on the external but I couldn't locate them. It's my understanding that the external must be blank to back your computer up with time machine.
No, it doesn't have to be empty (although Time Machine works best if it has its own, exclusive space). Without the error message(s), we don't know what is/was wrong.
I have run the Verify Disk on the internal and it says its all good.
Ah, good. That means you don't have directory problems.
I have not run a Repair Disk Permissions. I am not sure how to do that? Is that also located in the Disk Utility.
Yup, same window, different button.
I tried to just run the update from the update software option in the apple on the top left. I also then ran the combo that I downloaded from the apple site.
With what results? Did they compete? If not, what message did you get?

Similar Messages

Will a system restore from Time Machine erase any of the data that is currently on the Mac and not in the Time Machine?

We had a lot of data on our Mac (i.e. photos, iTunes libraries etc) which we backed up via Time Machine. The hard disk corrupted so we had to get it wiped. When we got it back, my parents started using the mac as per usual but they didn't do a full System Restore from Time Machine. So, if I do a full restore now, will it erase any of the new photos, musc etc that is currently on the mac?

The Time Machine restore will only restore what is on Time Machine. Making a clone is probably a better means of ensuring whatever data you want recovered gets recovered together with Time Machine.
Generally speaking, applications that are newer than the operating system from Apple that are included with the operating system are not supported. So in your data recovery process from your clone, you'll have to be careful what data you choose to copy back.

Downloads folder missing after system restore from Time Machine

I installed a new HDD, installed Leopard, and the did a system restore from Time Machine. Everything seems to work fine except from a big question mark in the dock, where downloads folder should be. Any suggestions pls?

Thank you very much for your quick answers.
Probably the problem originated from excluding the Downloads folder from my backup, although it should have been there in my new installation. The interesting thing was that this folder were nowhere to be found in the Finder, and by trying to download something from Safari, it just wouldn’t.
I did a Repair Permissions from the HDD, not the Leopard DVD, and all came back to normal.
I have to admit, that coming from The Win world, this HDD replacement was the easiest and fastest ever, by far!

HT1338 Attempt to install Mountain Lion has highlighted need for internal disk repair. Even after "repair" ML still says disk is damaged. Attempt to restore from Time Machine back-up failed - cannot 'see' internal HD to restore to. Help!

Attempt to install Mountain Lion has highlighted need for internal disk repair. Even after "repair" ML still says disk is damaged. Attempt to restore from Time Machine back-up failed - cannot 'see' internal HD to restore to. Help! Has attempt to install ML caused these problems or just highlighted existing need to Repair Disk? Even so, why can back-up from Time Machine not see the internal drive to restore to?

Csound1, William & Sig .... thanks for taking the trouble to reply. I fear you are right - I'll need a new disk. I'm booked in at the Apple Genius Bar in Bordeaux, France on Wed ... quite a challenge as my French isn't great! The current internal disk is 500gb, does anyone know whether I can upgrade my 21.5" iMac (circa Oct-2009 vintage) to a larger size internal disk, 1Tb or even 2Tb? I already have one external 2Tb drive and another one on order (I have masses of media stored and more planned as I've just taken up photography). Seems a bit of a pain managing with only 500gb internal storage. OR, can you advise me on how I can store all my photos on my new 2Tb external drive - I can't seem to figure out how to set the path for iPhoto to see them (I can't even figure out where they are stored right now!). Same with iTunes, how do I set the default storage to the external drive (I moved everything manually and then imported them all from the new drive - it worked but seemed very convoluted). Any advice on how to manage multiple drives gratefully received. And thanks again for previous replies.

Restoring From Time Machine Migration Assistant (and other ??)

Hello
Please bear with me on this long question....
For several reasons I reinstalled ML which involves erasing the HDD first. I do have everything bakced-up to Carbonite and TM. Carbonite is slow as molassess so I opted to try Migration Assistant/TM to restore my files. MA does not allow you to choose an older (good) backup and the backup that was used was an incomplete one as evidenced by the photo library being incomplete. Another poster had a similar question and the solution involved using the install disk. There is no install disc since it was a download from the Apps store.
Carbonite has a tendency to freeze-up during a long download. Restarting it brings your download back to the very beginning. I'm not happy about Carbonite. I've heard of SuperDuper and seems to have gotten good reviews.
Questions:
1. Is there a method to access an older TM backup from MA?
2. Is there a better option that Carbonite?
3. Is SuperDuper a good option for backups?
thank you, Bruce.

If your Mac shipped with a System Install DVD then boot from it and choose "Restore from Time Machine backup".
If your Mac shipped with Lion already installed you should be able to use OS X Recovery. Boot while holding ⌘ R and choose "Restore from Time Machine backup".
Either one should present a dated list of complete system backups from which to choose. Ideally it should be the most recent one, but if you have reason to believe it is incomplete (it should not be) then try an earlier one.
You can also boot from a locally connected Time Machine backup volume. Make sure it is connected with USB or FireWire and boot while holding an Option key. This will invoke Startup Manager, from which you can select your Time Machine backup volume. It will present the same restore options as OS X Recovery.
These options will be faster and should be less prone to difficulty than using Migration Assistant.
Time Machine and "clone" software use very different philosophies. SuperDuper! is good, so is Carbon Copy Cloner. They are more customizable than Time Machine, whose customizable features essentially consist of an "on / off" switch
Of course that is also its sole advantage over the others - it's boneheadedly simple to use.
Forget Carbonite, as you learned it does not work well on Macs. I know of no similar offsite backup services to recommend.

Full backup system restore from time machine

Help: I need to rebuild my system from Time Machine.
I am using iMac with 10.6.8. I plan to replace my HDD.
When trying to emulate the system restoration, I used the MAC Install DVD, which allowed accessing the Time Machine external disk.
However, TM suggested only one full backup dated 3/2011......
Can't time machine use all incremental steps between 2011 and today? 3 years......
What should I do before changing my HDD? Any way to force TM to accept a full backup NOW?
And then, will Restore rebuild my system as I see it today?
Thanks,
Moshe

The only one I've ever used is SuperDuper. It and Carbon Copy Cloner have free trail periods so you can experiment. I'm not familiar with the others.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone - SuperDuper
Clone - Synk
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested

IMac won't reboot after system restore from Time Machine

I just installed a wacom intuos pro tablet on my imac running snow leopard. The system clock reset to 1st Jan2000 and system prefenerces were no longer accesible. I performed a system restore from my time machine but now can't reboot. The restore completed succesfully (or so the it told me). When i restarted the imac i got the usual 'bing' followed by grey screen and spinning wheel swiftly followed by a light blue screen with the cursor in the top left hand corner.
There is sat for an hour befoe I switched off and tried again......same result.
The installation disc is still in the optical drive.
Any advice please on how to remidy this?
Thanks

I have/had a similiar problem. What I did was reset the SMC and PRAM. You can also do a safe boot. For the PRAM, I had to do three times, and my computer finally booted up. Afterwards I verified my disk and repaired my permissions. So far so good. I guessing that Spotlight needed to re-index the system.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2570

Errors Since Restoring from Time Machine back-up.

I had to do a complete wipe of my iMac hard drive, reinstall Mac OS X and then restore a backup from Time Machine. Now I am getting errors when trying to open Illustrator files, create new Illustrator documents, or open .ai files through Photoshop. I am using the Creative Cloud CS6 versions.

Ok, now I tried to open a .indd file in InDesign and got a slew of errors about conflicting plug-in files. There were dozens of them.

How can one do a full system restore from Time Machine to a Macbook Air

I recently had a major crash on my two internal disc DualG5. The system internal disk failed completely and I used Time Machine to do a full system restore to the second internal disc. It worked PERFECTLY!! I followed the instructions in support
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html
This involved inserting the Leopard DVD into the optical drive and backing up from my external LaCie time machine backup.
I also have a MacBook Air. I use an external USB HD drive as Time Machine backup. The Air only has one USB port. I have an external DVD drive for the Air. Clearly, I will not be able to mount the DVD and External disk at the same time unless I use a small hub. I guess this will work but is there any other work around. Could I do a full reinstall and then connect the external HD?

Richard,
Alternatively, you could use Remote Disc Sharing (via the DualG5) to do the install and reserve the USB port for the Time Machine disk.
[http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1131]
[http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1777]
Let us know if this was helpful.
Cheers!

Can't restore from Time Machine back ups

I began having problems with my 2 year old iMac which was not corrected with a re-install of Snow Leopard from the Installer disk.
I decided to restore my startup drive from a Time Machine backup. I followed the procedures. I selected the particular back up to restore from. Restore began and indicated that it would take about 2 hours and 40 minutes. When I came back to check 4 hours later, the progress bar was completely filled in but the text below it says:
"Restoring files (104.4%)
Time remaining: 1690214873 hours and 30 mins"
No progress seems to be going on. But if I just click the mouse I can hear my disks go into action and the numbers start changing on the time remaining for a few seconds and then everything stops.
I have repeated this experience twice now, each time using a different Time Machine backup.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
John

try repairing the TM drive with disk utility on the install DVD, any errors? also, reformat the internal drive using the partition tab in disk utility on the install DVD (don't use the erase tab). then try restoring again. if nothing helps then you'll have to erase the drive again and reinstall SL from scratch. then migrate from the TM backup manually. this is quite tedious but there is nothing else to do if the restore utility is not working.
see this link on what to restore in your home directory.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6185507
one correction to this link.
ical data is stored in ~/library/calendars.

I am restoring from time machine back up... estimated time: 26 hours!

why, oh god why, or whoever sees this question is it taking so long. am restoring my "Macintosh HD" from a time machine backup. I went through the whole deal, it detected how much needed to be restored, I selected which volume I wanted restored and from which backup, i clicked restore, and now its taking 26 hours. (went down to 22 hours in 1 hour from 26 though, some hope)
I have a 500gb seagate USB 2.0 7200 RPM HDD. (80 gigs about being restored)
is this normal? did I funk up? should I retry cause this is just fuged?
HELP

Give it some time. The number of hours calculated depends on the current transfer rate, so when that picks up it could drop the wait time. For me a ~40GB restore took ~3 hours from a FireWire drive.

Laptop died... can I rescue files from Time Machine back up and transfer to my kids iMac?

Hi. Not sure this is the right forum, could not find a Time Machine forum.
My 18 month old white Macbook has died (screen and track pad). I cannot afford a new one. I have a time machine backup. Is there a way to either
1. Take the HDD from the laptop and put it into an external HDD enclosuer, plug it into someone else Mac and access my Pages folders etc.
2. Or can I swap out a HDD from another macbook, install the HDD from the dead macbook and use it as normal...
3. Plug in my TM backup into another mac and (kids have macbooks and iMacs) and access my pages folders etc...
4. Or do some other combination of things to get up and running until I can buy another machine?
Many, many thanks for your help.

As long as the machine that is recovering the drive is not older than what's on the drive, and it has enough room to support all the contents of the drive it should work with the Migration Assistant. Otherwise a piecemeal recovery may be needed.

Restoring from Time machine Back Up

I'm trying to restore a folder (Itunes folder) to how it was yesterday. The folder was copied over replacing the one didn't want. But without the contents! When I try and drag across individual folders from the back up, it only copies the folders within it but not any files. I'm told I don't have permissions, despite having changed sharing and permissions appropriately including all items within a folder. It seems I have to drag each group of files across (as they occur in folders) separately entering my password each time. There must be a better way? can anyone help.

Yes many Thanx
I have been successful, I think my error was in what I selected to restore in the TM Mode. I'll get to the bottom of it through some experimentation.
Other peoples instructions are always hard to follow, what was perhaps most helpful was having a quick appropriate response which reinforced my thought that I was misunderstanding something fairly simple/basic.
Thanks again

New Mac, restore from Time Machine

My MacBookPro crashed today- hardware problem and in the process corrupted my email folder- not sure how or why. I bought a new machine and when I restored from Time Machine back-up, discovered that the most recent back-up had the corrupted mail file. Is there any way to go back in time, on a new machine, using a back-up from a different one. In other words, I want to restore from a Time Machine state that is 5 hours previous to the most recent back-up. Hope this makes sense.

yes, you can do it but if you need only Mail then it's simplest to restore just your Mail data rather than reinstalling everything which will take a while.
quit Mail. control-click on TM in the dock and choose "browse other TM disks". scroll back to the time you need and navigate to /Users/username/Library
restore the file /Users/username/Library/preferences/com.apple.mail.plist and the directory /users/username/library/mail to the corresponding locations on your new hard drive (delete the existing items first). start Mail. it will say it needs to import your messages. this actually means reindex. let it do so and you should be back to normal after it's done reindexing.

How do I Restore from Time Machine after I have reinstalled my system software (Snow Leopard and then Lion) ?, How do I Restore from Time Machine after I have reinstalled my system software (Snow Leopard and then Lion) ?

I have never done this before, so can someone explain in detail how I reintall my system software and then restore from Time Machine please ?

Your profile indicates that you currently have an older version of Snow Leopard (10.6.2). In order to install Lion, a prerequisite is the latest version of Snow Leopard (10.6.8). Perhaps a few more details would be helpfull in solving your problem. ex. If all you want to do is to upgrade to Lion, a restoration of data is unneccessary. Download the latest version of Snow Leopard and then download (purchase) and install Lion. User data will remain intact.
If I am missing something, please elaborate.
Ciao.

System Restore from Time Machine Back up and Mail

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