Time Machine restore didn't work, all of my files were restored to a hidden part of my HDD. What should I do?

I recently had my HDD wiped out at the Apple Store. Before doing this I did a complete time machine backup to an external Lacie drive. I had Snow Leopard reinstalled on my laptop and on booting the OS for the first time, my external drive wasn't recognized. I opened the migration assistant and the drive wasn't found either (but it showed up in the Finder and all of my files were accessible). It eventually opened in the Time Machine utility but when I restored to the last backup date, it saved to a folder called "Volumes," and nothing changed on my laptop. None of my files can be found on my HDD, none of my old settings are intact, but my drive is completely filled. I don't know where the files were saved to or what went wrong in the restore. Can anybody help me?

Yeah, thanks a lot from me too! I had exactly the same problem, but now things seem to be fine. Apple should pay you, since you do their job!

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Time machine doesn't back up all the estimated files

Ran Time machine for the first time today. The back up is on a seperate harddrive. It estimated about 93 gigs (I had room for 125 gigs on the partitioned drive), but suddenly stopped when it got to about 63 gigs. It acted like everything is just fine. I had no exclusions except for a few hard drives plugged in, everything else is fine for back up. I use Lion and my computer is about two years old. Please help

Just a suggestion, but try entering Time Machine using the application and see if you can find any of the missing data. If so, see if you can restore it.
If you have 1.5 TB of data, you really need a bigger backup drive. The rule of thumb is 2 to 4 times your data. You should also have more than one backup. Either another Time Machine drive or a clone.
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
Commonly Used Backup Methods

Time Machine does not back up all iTunes music files

Hello, I'm trying to view the music files, on my Time Machine backup disc, from a CD that I recently imported into iTunes. My iTunes library resides on my hard drive. The backup disc shows files for some of the other music that is in my iTunes library, but not from the new CD. I did several backups after importing the new music, but the song files still do not show up in Time Machine. Any ideas for why the files don't show up?
My ultimate aim is to copy those music files onto another computer, but my research on the support pages suggests that I should not do it this way. Instead, I will copy the music files onto another disc (not using Time Machine) and then import them onto the other computer. Please confirm that this is the best way to proceed.
But in the meantime, I'm wondering why Time Machine does not show my newly imported music.
Thanks very much for any help you can provide.

New formulation of my question:
A file dated at 10:00 may not appear in the back-up dated 11:00.

Mail Restores after Time Machine Restore - Why?

I just re-formatted my hard drive and performed a Time Machine restore using Lion's Restore. When I launched Mail it asked to Import my Mail and once done many of the old msg's appeared as 'unread' including every msg in trash. Why? I though a RESTORE from Time Machine restored an "image" of a system and therefore Mail should have acted just like my old mail.
Comments?

Your analysis is correct. It is, alas, a complex and imperfect world.
Time Machine is designed to make backups automatically without you having to remember to do so. it also saves a historical record of all of those backups so that if you don't notice a file is corrupted, wrong, or missing right away, you can go back 3 weeks and get the last known, good version. It also has a funky, intelligent interface that allows you to restore data in some specific applications. For example, you can restore individual Mail messages and Address book entries even though this data is stored in very hard-to-decipher databases.
All of those Time Machine tricks come with a price. The price is that you can't boot from Time Machine and Time Machine isn't always a perfect image.

HT201250 When getting a replacement Seagate hard drive for my Imac through Apple, will they restore my system to it's current state? Or will I have to do it myself though Time Machine? Will Time machine restore all the programs as well?

Apple has determined that certain Seagate 1TB hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems may fail. These systems were sold between October 2009 and July 2011.
Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) will replace affected hard drives free of charge.
Will this replacement program restore my system to its current state after the new drive is installed? If not, will I have to have all my original disks to re-install all the programs on my current computer, or will Time Machine restore them as well?

Most of them will tell you to backup your data.
Time Machine is nice, but unless you are interested in archival backup, Carbon Copy Cloner is a lot easier to recover from:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1992

Time machine corrupted sparsebundle? how to repair? time machine restore not working

On my macbook pro, after starting with Cmd-R, I erased the hard disk, re-installed Mavericks and I want to restore my back up with Time Machine. I select the NAS where the backup is, it sees the backup file but it says: "There is a problem with this backup and it can't be restored". I also copied the backup file (with extension sparsebundle) to another external hard disk and tried to use it from there but I have the same problem. With my iMac (as the laptop is not usable since I started it with cmd-R), when I double click on the backup file (ext sparsebundle), it mounts and I can actually see and access the files that are there. I do not understand why the restore is not working with the Time Machine. It seems the sparsebundle is corrupted. I tried these instructions: http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,08,27,169,fix-time-machine-sparsebundle-nas-b ased-backup-errors.html
But I am stuck at this step: tail -f /var/log/fsck_hfs.log
iMac-6:~ root# tail -f /var/log/fsck_hfs.log
/dev/rdisk3s2: ** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
/dev/rdisk3s2: ** Detected a case-sensitive volume.
/dev/rdisk3s2: The volume name is Time Machine Backups
/dev/rdisk3s2: ** Checking extents overflow file.
/dev/rdisk3s2: ** Checking catalog file.
/dev/rdisk3s2: Invalid key length
/dev/rdisk3s2: (4, 57529)
/dev/rdisk3s2: ** The volume Time Machine Backups could not be verified completely.
Nothing seems to happen even after a few hours (like 3 hours). The sparsebundle bakcup file is about 200 GB big. It does not seem to do anything as I do not notice any disk activity.
Could someone please advise how to do the restore with the Time Machine or how I can repair the backup file?

Well, if Time Machine is the only thing on that hard drive and there is only one partition, sooner or later, Time Machine will fill up the entire thing and you can't use it for anything else.
Now, you can start over, but that will mean that your Time machine backups will be wiped out. If that is what you want, it is a rather easy process easily accomplished in Disk Utility:
With hard drive connected, open Disk Utility (Applications -> Utilities). Highlight the Time Machine hard drive (the top entry for it). Click on the Partition tab. In the window, pick 2 partitions under the "volume scheme" and then slide the little thing at the bottom to adjust the size of each partition. Make sure the format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and, under options, click the GUID partition scheme. Name each one (i.e. "Time Machine" and "backups") and click "apply". Disk Utility will first erase the drive and then create 2 partitions (2 totally separate drives so to speak). You're done.....
You can then set up the one for Time Machine and the other to drag over whatever files you want.

Mountain Lion Server Web Server not working after time machine restore

Our Mountain Lion Server (mac mini) lost its drive yesterday. We got a new mac mini and did a time machine restore. Everything in the Server seems to be working (users, groups, file shares, etc) except for the web server.
Trying to connect to the server results in safari not being able to connect to the server. Even just clicking on the "view server website" link in the Server app doesn't work.
We've tried stopping / restarting the services. We have confirmed that the files in Library / Server with the web pages were restored.
Are there any gotchas, troubleshooting steps or guides anyone can point me to? I'd like to get our wiki back.
Thanks
Jeff

/var/log/apache2/error_log repeats the following lines about every 30 seconds:
[Tue May 07 18:44:15 2013] [error] Init: Pass phrase incorrect
[Tue May 07 18:44:15 2013] [error] SSL Library Error: 218710120 error:0D094068:asn1 encoding routines:d2i_ASN1_SET:bad tag
[Tue May 07 18:44:15 2013] [error] SSL Library Error: 218529960 error:0D0680A8:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_CHECK_TLEN:wrong tag
[Tue May 07 18:44:15 2013] [error] SSL Library Error: 218595386 error:0D07803A:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_ITEM_EX_D2I:nested asn1 error
[Tue May 07 18:44:15 2013] [error] SSL Library Error: 218734605 error:0D09A00D:asn1 encoding routines:d2i_PrivateKey:ASN1 lib
[Tue May 07 18:44:26 2013] [crit] (17)File exists: mod_rewrite: Parent could not create RewriteLock file /var/log/apache2/rewrite.lock
Configuration Failed

ALL Photos missing after Time Machine restore (help)

So, I accidently formated the wrong drive while in Windows, (big oops) which gave me the opportunity to take Time Machine for a test drive.
I put the DVD in, and was able to restore from the TIme Machine drive. Very impressed! Everything came back just as I had left it except - whats this? The default Leopard wallpaper instead of a picture of my son? Huh strange, I thought. Until I noticed I had no photos in iPhoto.
There seems to be reminents of photos in the iphoto database - the size is 1.3gb instead of the 7gb it used to be. But 0 photos in iPhoto 08.
I went into iPhoto and choose File/Browse Backups. I selected Nov 8th, which was the last day of my backup and showed all 7000+ photos, and clicked "Restore All". This brought up something odd - a 2nd iPhoto icon in the dock, which showed a progress bar for the restore. Once the restore was completed, I still had a 2nd iPhoto icon the the bar, which was iPhoto running - but no photos in iphoto! I exited the 2nd iphoto, which disappeared, and launched my normal Iphoto icon. Still no photos! (That just seems odd that it would launch iPhoto with a 2nd icon)
So, I moved my iphoto database, and launch iPhoto in order to create a fresh database - thinking maybe that was the issue. I then did File/Restore again, and went through the whole processes again, including the odd 2nd icon. Still, no photos! And another 1.3gb iphoto database!
Is it normal for a Time Machine restore to not include your photos? Surely you are not supposed to restore them separately from within Iphoto?
What do I do now? At this point, everything went very well - except no photos! Which is awful and not at all expected! 7000+ family photos! At least, if I ask iPhoto/Time Machine to restore 'all photos' you would think it would restore 'all photos' - not show a progress bar, and then show me no photos!
p.s. I just tooked at the iPhoto Library. The 1.3gb is in /Data/ which contains folders 2000-2007, my Events, and thumbnails of all the photos - but no actual photos (the 'Originals' folder is missing).
I then went back in time, and found the 8gb iPhoto Library database. I supposed I could copy it over manually via Time Machine, and not iPhoto's Restore/TM - but - i'm so far off track of how this should have went I don't know what to think!
p.s.s. So I did just that - copied the 8gb iPhoto Library manually from TM, and pasted it in place. I help down option, and launch iPhoto, selecting the 8gb library - and BOOM... no photos!
Something is #$%# up here.
Message was edited by: metzen79

This is what it says in the help file:
Reverting to a previous Mac OS X version
If you’ve used Time Machine to back up your computer, you can easily revert to a previous version of Mac OS X if you’re experiencing trouble after installing an update.
IMPORTANT: Reverting to the previous version of Mac OS X will erase any additions or changes you’ve made to the files on your computer after installing the new version of Mac OS X. To save new or revised files, copy them onto a different disk or back them up using Time Machine before you follow these instructions. Use Time Machine only if you’re reverting to a previous version of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), since Time Machine is not available with Mac OS X 10.4 or earlier.
To revert to a previous version of Mac OS X:
Insert the disc you used to install the new version of Mac OS X, and double-click the Install Mac OS X icon.
In the Installer, choose Utilities > Restore System From Backup.
In the Restore Your System dialog, click Continue.
Select your Time Machine backup volume.
Select the Time Machine backup you want to restore. To restore your computer to the state it was in before you installed a new version of Mac OS X, choose the most recent backup.
Follow the onscreen instructions.
If you backed up any individual files as described under the Important message above, you can restore them now. If you backed them up using Time Machine, recover them using the Time Machine application. (You’ll find the Time Machine application in the Dock or in the Applications folder.)
Hope this helps
Denisimo

Log-ins don't work after an OS X Leopard Time Machine restore

I upgraded the RAM and HDD on a Santa Rosa MacBook and then did a Time Machine restore from my old iMac G5 Time Machine backup. Everything seemed to go well but afterwards my login and admin passwords were no longer accepted. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Thanks.

Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at the top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)

OS X Server 3.1 Time Machine Restore

I have a Mac Mini that was running OS X Mavericks and Server 3.1 with the Time Machine Backup service running. The client Macs running OS X Mountain Lion and Mavericks do their back ups to an external USB 3 drive attached to the Mac Mini server. Back ups from the clients work fine. However, when I tried to do a restore for one of the Macs using the the Recovery HD of the Mac, the network back up drive showed in the list and after selecting it and entering in the MBPs logon credentials, I kept getting an error that said "There was a problem connecting to the server "sever.local. The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again". I didn't get a list of back ups on the drive to restore from. The other services running were VPN, Profile Manager, File Sharing, Open Directory and DNS. I'm using a qualified domain name for DNS (server.blah.blah.com) and that is setup correctly and working.
Has anyone else experienced the above? If so, what was used to resolve the issue?
I have since reinstalled OS X Mountain Lion along with OS X Server 2.2.2 with the same services running and DNS configuration. I can now back up AND restore from the network Time Machine drive without issue for all my Macs that back up to it.

"There was a problem connecting to the server "sever.local. The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again".
Is the name of your server really "server"?
I had a server named (something like) Acme Exterminators Server. I got this exact same message, naming "server.local". I solved the problem by temporarily renaming my server to "server", whereupon the entire restore process worked flawlessly. Then I changed it back when I was done.
It's as if putting spaces or special characters in your server name confuses the restore code.

FCP X does not recognize projects and events on USB drive after a time machine restore of the MBP macintosh disk

FCP X does not recognize projects and events on USB drive after a time machine restore of the MBP macintosh disk.
I upgraded from an i5 to an i7 15" MBP and restored my files using my time machine backup. All seemed to go ok, except I had to use the migration assistant because on the initial boot the MAC didn't recognize the backup database on the USB device. MAybe this is a hint.
Since when I start FCPX it too cannot finnd the project or event directories.
Before my upgrade, I had a choice of files either on the Macintosh disk or the 2TB USB disk.
Now only files on the Macintosh are accessible to FCPX. The USB drive is visible under events and project but it finds no projects or events.
Please help if you can.
Thanks
Barry

Thanks... alas no one has responded.
I think I have the structure that you are recommending.
I have a root level directory (Final Cut Events) with the files in them.
The puzzling thing is that it used to work before the migration!.
Anyway I'm going to move the contents to the root and see what happens.
On a slightly different note...
I also posted a question about CPU utilization. Can I ask a question or two?
While rendering a short clip, I noticed burst of disk activity when the render started (likely loading the media files into ram since I have about 4Gigs available, then almost no activity while the render is happening, then more disk activity when its done.
However the cpu activity is not as high as I would have expected since rendering requires a lot of cpu.
What is your experience? I know some render is done by the GPU, but in my older i5 the CPU was about 100%, now in my i7 its about 50%.
Please look at the attached utilization for CPU and disk activity.
Thanks for any thoughts... Barry

Time Machine restore from WD my book live duo

Dear all and especially anyone out there who may be able to help me.
I have a MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion, a WD mybook live duo 3/6tb on the LAN, all wired.
It has been backing up through Time Machine fine until my MacBook crashed earlier this week so I have a fairly
recent snapshot of my MacBook before the crash.
I wanted to restore, after a Hard Disk erase which seemed necessary, from Time Machine but I couldn't make it work
as it kept asking me for user names and passwords of the NAS (which I entered of course) only
to result in error meesages saying the 'share' didn't exist. (Despite the fact that it does immediately
recognise the backup and location on the NAS.)
WD support advised me to first reinstall OSX ML and then use the regular Time Machine
functionality to restore my Mac.
- there is no option to fully restore your Mac through the wonderful TimeMachine time travel
functionality. I tried to restore my Macintosh HD back to a recent time point but that resulted in
nothing much (or nothing at all, I don't know). I don't see my old stuff, I still see a kind of vanilla
OSX ML installation.
- using the restore functionality (CMD-R during startup) and the time machine restore option,
results in the same nagging for names and passwords and error messages that the share
doesn't exist.
WD support couldn't tell me what the share name (and possibly password) would be for where it stores Time Machine backup
files (it doesn't show up in the list of shares when you look in the WD dashboard) and that makes sense to me as when you
tell Time Machine to use the NAS, it doesn't ask you for anything in terms of shares or passwords either.
So here I am: with probably a very good and recent complete backup at my disposal but no way of restoring it to my Mac.
So all I had and trusted to Time Machine is lost.
Is anyone out here who can help me? Anyone with a similar experience and hopefully solution? (That I can understand....I am a Mac user! :-) )
I would be enormously grateful!
Greetings from Amsterdam,
Eric

Hello Eric, not sure if this helps or is exactly what you are looking for as I am unfamiliar with the NAS issue you have. However, I recently restored my computer from Mavericks back to Snow Leopard using my WD mybook. At first I was unable to use the WD mybook for restore, as is was not recognized by the computer after the menu came up from pressing "command R" during start up. I attributed this to the WD software requiring a password to access the drive. This is the same password that you (anyone who owns a WD mybook) have to supply each time you want to use time machine to back up files. There is a simple remedy I found. You need to go to your applcations and select "WD SmartWare," type in your password, then select the "Settings" tab at the upper right hand conner. Then select "Set up drive." On the right side of the window there is the "Set Security Options," sign in using your password in the box displayed under "password," then select "Remove Security." The last step would be to save the security setting, and you are all set to use your WD mybook without a password for full system restoration. So when you restart your computer and hold (or as I found press many times) the "command R" to access the restore window at start up, you can select restore from time machine, and have your WD mybook now appear in the timemachine device window, as the device is not password protected anymore. Once your computer is restored you can follow the same steps outlined above to reinstate your password for your WD mybook. Best of luck,
Marc

Permissions/ Ownership issues after time machine restore

I moved from one macbook pro to another a few months ago. I opened the brand new one up, and set it up with the same account name as my old one.
I then proceeded to restore my old data from a time machine backup using the migration assistant.
Apparently there were some issues trying to migrate from a backup with the same name as the owner of the new computer, so I had to pick a new one. I then switched back over using the root user.
Even though I'm the only account on the computer besides root, and have admin privileges, some programs won't install or upgrade, I get a system message saying that I have insufficient privileges.
Is there any way to give the one account complete control of my system? I don't like having to use root that much. Thanks for your help!

Similar issues. My iMac had one of the Seagate 1TB drives that was part of the recall program. After I loaded Maverick, I started having issues that seemed to be disk related and I started getting some Time Machine errors...never had any errors until installing Maverick.
Since I was outside my 3 Yr warranty...Apple would only cover 1/2 the costs of replacing my "faulty" drive. Can't believe this was their policy to make me pay 1/2 for a drive they've known to have enough problems to announce a recall? They told me the problem was Seagate...I refuted by telling them...no...it's Apple. Can you believe they would try to pass the buck on Seagate...Apple has their label on my machine and they are the ones that negotiated the recall with Seagate? Whew!
So I took in my Time Machine backup via a 1TB External Seagate drive...and now the fun begins. I've had my system in to the Genius bar for several weeks...many trips. I've learned to not take my machine home without test driving myself as they tend to only fix 1 of the permissions issues at a time. It doesn't seem they really know what's going on...which is pretty scarey.
Anyway...the fix they seemed to use in the store was to rename my user directory and then create a new user directory with my original name...then copy everything in the renamed directory into the new directory. That fixed issues with Mail...but now my mail is totally screwed. Can't believe the work I had to do to get my mail folders all back to somewhat normal. iMovie couldn't find my movies folder. iCloud preview pane wasn't opening. I couldn't save/write to my internal disk on most of my apps. The one app I didn't test before leaving the store was iTunes. It's still screwed up and I'm not sure the chmod command will fix it...I think they tried this as an initial fix at the store. What a nitemare...
Open to any suggestions. Thanks!

Reactivate software needed after Time Machine Restore?

So I'm getting ready to upgrade the HD in my MBP and I am going to try the time machine restore feature (hopefully) to reload the new HD to exact status of old HD. From what I've read this is pretty easy to do. What I can't find in my searches is if all the apps on my HD will need to be reactivate after this procedure.
Once I restore the new HD does all the software need to be reactivated? I have a ton of apps that I have no idea where the serial #'s are and would be screwed if I had to reactivate them. Or does the restore to the new HD work seemlessly so that it's as if I didn't even swap HDs.

The only 'problem' I've ever had after a restore was with the MS Office for Mac suite 2011. It required me to either re-enter my activation code or sign-on to my Office 365 account (I did the latter).
Never had a problem with Adobe products, though. I can't guarantee that you won't, of course, but I've personally never had a problem with Adobe products.
Clinton

Time Machine restore fails from Snow Leo disc. iMac 24" 2007

My hard drive sufferd some kind of crash yesterday. I booted to the SL-disc and formatted the drive. I then verified it with no errors before formatting again - this time I told it to write 0´s. The drive verifies fine in disk utility. I go into the Time Machine restore dialogue and selects the latest recovery point and it goes to work and I go to bed. Wake up the error "the OS X install could not be completed" or something like that only in norwegian. I try again with an earlier recovery point, but after a few hours it displays the same message.
The only weird thing about my setup is that the TM drive is connected through my firewire audio interface. I am at work now and came to think of this little weirdness. Can this be the problem? I seem to remember having recovered before without this causing a problem. Any other suggestions? Is my drive really troubled even though it reports no problems after the format?

It's hard to tell, but just to be safe, I'd connect the drive directly.
It might have been damaged by the crash; you might also want to repair it, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
When you do the restore, select Window, then Show Log and Show All logs from the menubar. These selections may require several seconds to take effect, but you can tell how far the process has gotten.
If the restore seems to get most of the way, but fails again, see if it will start up. If not, try installing a fresh copy of OSX. See what didn't get copied; you may be able to recover the missing stuff by restoring it selectively.

Time Machine restore didn't work, all of my files were restored to a hidden part of my HDD. What should I do?

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