Time Machine restore to new computer

My iMac G5 has completely failed, and I am getting a new iMac Core2Duo. As the old computer is dead, I won't be able to use migration assistant to copy my stuff from the old computer. So I will need to restore my files from the Time Machine back-up.
Slightly worried because I'm moving from a PowerPC to Intel machine.
Any tips or ideas? I know I will need to go through the install DVD to initiate the restore process.
Any help would be really useful!

I was just going to make a post myself but thought perhaps I could do it as a reply to this post.
I have had the same issue and ... Time Machine doesn't work. Apple Care has been pretty much useless in solving my problem. Background: 6 month old 24' iMac, I'm doing a software update and the OS update (10.5.6) fails. System resources are corrupted so I have to do an OS reinstall. Except that doesn't work. Bad file system. Only fix is to wipe the disk and reinstall. That doesn't work, Apple replaces the hard drive "bad firmware". Hmm.. So I go to restore from Time Machine - the restore won't work either from the new install or the migration assistant. The symptom is that the Time Machine app can see the external hard drive, knows it's a time machine disk, but says no system is present. I don't get the list of folders (dates) I'm supposed to get at the various restore points. The Time Machine disk is fine. I can use the finder and see all the files and folders. I can do the painful drag and drop restore. I'll have to reinstall apps from scratch but the data is there. I've deleted the interrupted backup, deleted the "Latest" folder, done a variety of stuff Time Machine tech support has suggested. It just doesn't work. No explanation. I've got a good Time Machine backup and essentially a new machine and no-go.
What I would do is make a back up of your time machine disk. I would get another disk and do a drag and drop copy of the data you care about. Make a backup of the backup in other words. Then use the Time Machine restore function to selectively restore folders.
What I think is happening here is that despite the assertion that Time Machine is a simple incremental backup, I think that there are ties between the source and the target at the system level. In my case I had a more complex file system than usual, multiple user accounts, and probably a corrupted OS that migrated itself onto the time machine volume. I think Time Machine is looking to the system files somewhere on the Time Machine disk and if those are corrupted your Time Machine disk as a source for a full restore is useless.
I'll probably make a separate post on this so sorry in advance on that but if anyone has any ideas on how I can solve this and help the original poster Mr. Tanner avoid this, it would be great. Maybe a Time Machine system engineer is reading and can offer some help. I live in San Jose and I'm happy to bring my Mac and Time Machine disk over to Cupertino....

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Time machine restore on new computer

I have an old iMac with an external drive for Time Machine. I bought a new Macbook Pro 13" and want to move the content of my old computer onto my new one. I connected the external hard drive to the new laptop and used Migration Assistant to back up from Time Machine. 1.5 hours later it said it was successful. When I look at the hard drive on the new laptop it says 160 gigs are being used (the amount of content on the old machine). BUT I can't find that content anywhere. The stuff that was on the old desktop, isn't on the new one. I don't see anything under documents or pictures or anywhere. Am I missing something? Thanks.

Hi there
Migration assistant has most likely transferred all of your data into another user account (same name as the other Mac).
Click the Apple Menu, then Logout. At the login screen, you should see your other account there, simply login to it, using the same password as you would on your old Mac.
Once you have confirmed everything is there you can delete the superfluous account.
Go to Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Accounts
Unlock the padlock (bottom left)
Click the user account (not the one you are logged into)
Then click the - (minus) button in the bottom left corner, and choose to remove the home folder

Can time machine restore in new HDD?

if i backup my mac os in an external hdd with time machine and then ill change my mac hdd, can time machine restore my os in new hdd?(for example by Recovery Disk Assistant)

Naming it the same tends to make things easier. Time Machine can backup your entire OS as long as you haven't excluded anything in System Preferences/Time Machine/Options.
Another option is to make a bootable clone. You should have more than one backup on 2 different drives since hard drives do fail.
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

Old time machine backups on new computer?

I migrated to a new mac. I have a time capsule. Can I set up time machine on the new mac to use all the backups from my old mac? Or do I start over?

Technically, you can. But practically, in this case, you probably don't want to.
TM backs-up whole systems, not just drives and data. If you back up two or more Macs to the same drive or TC, TM will keep them separate. You can view and restore from backups from other machines by holding down the Option key while selecting the TM menubar icon, changing +Enter Time Machine+ to +Browse Other Time Machine Disks.+ Since your old and new Macs are different machines, this would work.
But there's a problem: since the backups are for a different Mac, TM on you new Mac won't automatically delete the old series in the normal fashion. Unless you delete them, they'll be there forever, taking up space you need for new backups.
Worse, it's very tedious to delete them manually. Do not use the Finder, but you can delete the old backups, one at a time, via the TM interface. It's a long, tedious process ... and much longer on a TC.

How do I restore all my data, so that I have 2 alike computers from my time machine, to my new computer

When I on my new computer "open Time mashine preferences" and turn it on and "enter time mashine" in the Time mashine bar, enter the password, I am possible to open 2 drives. One is emty and the other one, has only the possibility to be removed. There is no sign to restore, what do I do wrong? Please help me

Restoring your entire system from a backup
If you are restoring a backup made by a Mac to the same Mac
With your backup drive connected, start up your Mac from the Recovery system (Command-R at startup) or Mac OS X v10.6 installation disc. Then use the "Restore From Time Machine Backup" utility.
Note: If "You can't restore this backup because it was created by a different model of Mac" appears when restoring a backup that was made on a different Mac, follow the onscreen instructions.
If you are restoring a backup made by one Mac to a completely different Mac
Important: If the backup you are about to restore is from a completely different Mac, use the Migration Assistantto transfer data from the backup, as described in the next section.
Migrating a Time Machine backup to a new Mac
When you buy a new Mac, you can transfer all of your applications, files, settings, and other information from a Time Machine backup you've already made.
You will be asked if you want to transfer files when you start up your new Mac for the first time. Or, you can use the Migration Assistant (located in Applications/Utilities).
After Migration Assistant completes the transfer and you select your existing Time Machine backup drive, you will be prompted with "Inherit Backup History". Once selected you will be able to continue to use your existing Time Machine backup on your new Mac.
(Excerpt from: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427)

LONG Time Machine restore to new retina display iMac

Received new iMac 4 Ghz i7, 3 Tb drive retina display, and elected to transfer my information from Time Machine that is on a 1 Tb USB drive. Before doing this, I used this drive to restore a repaired older machine, and the transfer of all materials (about 900 Gb) took about 11 hours. On the new machine, it has been running for 12 hours, and shows nearly 70 hours remaining (it is stuck on the Transfer the Applications phase). I watched it for a while and the amount of time is incrementing, not decreasing. Seems like an unreasonable time interval. Anyone have similar experience or any advice?
Thanks in advance.
- Mike

Sorry - I have had a dual TM backup system for several years. My machine hard disk DIED and was replaced. I also purchased the new computer at the same time. There was no method of "test" except that I have previously restored onto the old machine. The two backup TM disks are identical and two weeks ago I verified that I could "read" each of them (anticipating a clean install of Yosemite).
I used TM #1 and restored the old machine within 11 hours. At same time, I hooked up TM #2 to new machine, and it is still cranking along.
Both Yosemite installs were done by Apple; I have other machines that I have clean installed Yosemite using a bootable USB stick so that option is alive. I anticipate that you are right and that TM #2 has somehow failed in the middle of the restore.
Thanks for your assistance.

Help: cannot retrieve old files from Time Machine backup on new computer!

I backed up my old Macbook Pro for several months. I've got a new Macbook Pro and I succeeded to restore the last content of the old one using the migration assistant.
However, now I need some older files that I know are in the backup, but I can't restore them because you apparently can only do that with the computer from which you made the backups... a Time Machine backup is 'tied' to the sparsebundle using the MAC-address of the computer...
I don't have my old computer anymore, does this really mean that all the old file in the backup are lost for me? Or is there an other way?
Please help.
Wim

Wimek,
According to this KB article (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1760)
"When upgrading from one Leopard-based Mac to a new Leopard-based Mac, and you wish to use Time Machine backups from the previous Mac, make sure the computer name of the new Mac (in Sharing preferences) is the same as your previous Mac's computer name was when its Time Machine backups were made. Afterwards, if the previous Mac is still on your network, give it a different computer name."

Time Machine restore on new Hard Drive and now my login password not working

I just had a new hard drive installed and they put in a clean version of 10.6.
I got home and used my TIme Machine to restore from my other computer. It finished, but now I am locked out, bacause its not accepting my password. I know its my password, the hint is the same as I have always had. It just won't work,
Since the repair place installed the software, I don't have any other disks to boot from. Does anyone know a way to fix this or reset the computer again? I don't care if the files are lost, I can copy them over later. I just need to get past the login screen. Thanks!!

Do you have any OS disks you can boot from? If so, boot from the disk, look in Utilities, and see if there is a reset password option.

Time machine restore on new hdd - freeze!

ive upgraded my hdd to a 500g drive from my 160g. in an attempt to restore a backup from time machine, i backed up, switched disks, installed tiger - no option to backup from time machine. so i upgraded to leopard (when i tried to originally boot up from leopard it wouldnt work, so used the install 1 disk of tiger) - and was able to restore from time machine there.
id already partioned the new disk using disk utility, and the restore seemed to work fine.
however, when i tried to start up my computer, within a few moments of the startup apple screen, i would see a system crash message asking me to restart my machine by keeping the standby switch pressed for a few moments.
when i booted from an osx disk, and looked at disk utility, it showed that the requisite amount of my ew drive had been used up, indicating that the transfer had happened, and when i had restored from time machine, it also stated the restore was successful.
ive switched back to my old drive to log on now, adn am currently trying a clone with superduper - but any idea as to why i would have encountered the crash message? tried restarting several times, and tried restoring again from scratch using time machine, but with the same result each time.

moretoexplore wrote:
I'm getting ready to install a new 1TB internal drive for my iMac and trying to determine the best way to do my system restore. I have two questions...
Question #1: Should I use Time Machine to restore my data, etc, to my new internal hard drive? Is this the best way to accomplish this or should I start fresh and restore everything manually?
that's up to you. the easiest is to restore from TM. if you are having problems with your current system you can do a manual restore but it's a lot more work.
Question #2: I have two external drives. One is used only for iMovie Events (1TB) and the other is used for Time Machine backups (2TB). I use Time Machine to back up both the internal drive (soon to be 1TB) and the 1TB external drive (once again, my iMovie Events). If I use Time Machine to restore, can I restore only those files that were associated with the internal drive?
yes. the easiest option is to do a full system restore which will restore your system drive. to do that boot from the leopard install DVD and choose 'restore system from backup" from the Utilities menu at the top. you don't need to install leopard on the new drive first. the drive can be blank.

How to get my files back from time machine on a new computer

My laptop has been stolen so i bought a new one.
I would like to keep the clean install but also i would like to restore my files from my time machine (on a time capsule)
How can i do that ?

After you do a clean install, when you first boot up, Setup Assistant will open and you can restore everything from Time Machine.
Set up a New Mac
Migration Assistant/Set Up Assistant - Mavericks

All applications were "?" On the dashboard after time machine restore to new hard drive...what went wrong?

Hi folks
I used the cmd R option on booting the MBP and did a disk scan and it reported errors that could not be fixed/repaired.
So I opted to install a brand new 1Tbyte Seagate hybrid hard drive and restore from my time machine backup.
So I installed the new drive in the MBP...it stated that it needed to restore from the internet and I was treated with a rotating globe for about 10 minutes.
It then gave the normal restore options and I opened to format the new drive as a mac drive etc...
Selected the most recent TM backup from USB drive and pointed it to the new formatted HD in the MBP.
So far so good I thought....it said it was restoring....
waited about 4.5 hours and apparently it completed when I was out so I did not see any messages just a normal looking mavericks desktop BUT with "?" In the dashboard where all the applications icons should be?????
I assume something went wrong somewhere so I reinstalled the old HD and restarted TM and it's not starting to backup all 493Gbyte of disk whichI. Understand is normal after a full restore.
So...what to do now??? I'll wait for the 7 odd hours of TM to complete but how best should I proceed with the new HD etc...should I reinstall and copy mavericks to it from a memory stick and then attempt a new restore from the recent TMS backup? Or will this cause issues....
I also have an Inateck hard drive cloning device (brand new never used) so I had wondered if I should simply install the old drive and new drives into this and start the cloning mechanism? OR will this simply clone the errors that were reported on the old drive when it was in the MBP?
In short I'm not sure what to do for the best now and would welcome helpful suggestions as to how to proceed.
thanks
Nick

<<<<UPDATE>>>>
If at first you don't succeed...
Last night after the new 493 Gbyte time machine completed. I once again installed the new drive and restarted the MBP ...waited 10 min for the internet to download the basic disk utilities...restarted the restore from TM and waited 6 hours...Happy days it worked perfectly and like a rocket...the old disk had a read write speed of approx 50-60 Mb/s the new one (hybrid drive) measures at 100-110 Mb/s...programmes open and close noticeably faster and it's better than when the MBP was new...
Apparently this new hybrid drive "learns" frequently used programmes and caches parts that improves start up time etc as time progresses etc...the MBP now starts from cold boot in less than 1 minute compared to 2 plus before...I know minutes should not really matter but it does improve the user experience. I should add I have 16G of RAM installed which does make a difference with Photoshop and Aperture etc.
Hope this helps others or at least encourages people to try hybrid drives over the much more expensive SSD option.

Time Machine Restore After New Logic Board

Older iMac (2009) had hard drive and logic board replaced. Running latest system (10.10.2) before and after logic board replacement.
When attempting to restore from a Time Machine backup made prior to the new logic board, although the iMac sees the Time Capsule and the "Data" file, attempts to proceed with the restore are met with error message "There was a problem connecting to the server [name of Time Capsule] - contact your administrator."
Any experience with this issue? Anybody successfully perform a restore following a new logic board?
Thanks very much.

I would refer you to visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with Time Machine and full system restore. It also provides instruction on how to restore a backup from another system or Time Machine backup drive.

Time Machine Restore on New Internal Drive

I'm getting ready to install a new 1TB internal drive for my iMac and trying to determine the best way to do my system restore. I have two questions...
Question #1: Should I use Time Machine to restore my data, etc, to my new internal hard drive? Is this the best way to accomplish this or should I start fresh and restore everything manually?
Question #2: I have two external drives. One is used only for iMovie Events (1TB) and the other is used for Time Machine backups (2TB). I use Time Machine to back up both the internal drive (soon to be 1TB) and the 1TB external drive (once again, my iMovie Events). If I use Time Machine to restore, can I restore only those files that were associated with the internal drive? I really wont need to restore all my iMovie events on the external drive.
Thanks so much!

moretoexplore wrote:
I'm getting ready to install a new 1TB internal drive for my iMac and trying to determine the best way to do my system restore. I have two questions...
Question #1: Should I use Time Machine to restore my data, etc, to my new internal hard drive? Is this the best way to accomplish this or should I start fresh and restore everything manually?
that's up to you. the easiest is to restore from TM. if you are having problems with your current system you can do a manual restore but it's a lot more work.
Question #2: I have two external drives. One is used only for iMovie Events (1TB) and the other is used for Time Machine backups (2TB). I use Time Machine to back up both the internal drive (soon to be 1TB) and the 1TB external drive (once again, my iMovie Events). If I use Time Machine to restore, can I restore only those files that were associated with the internal drive?
yes. the easiest option is to do a full system restore which will restore your system drive. to do that boot from the leopard install DVD and choose 'restore system from backup" from the Utilities menu at the top. you don't need to install leopard on the new drive first. the drive can be blank.

Can't open iWeb 09 even after Time Machine restore to new

Well I broke it!
I tried to open a saved iWeb html file that was saved from my old Intel Mac Mini running iWeb 08 that I Migrated over via Firewire. I even tried to restore iWeb using Time Machine, from when it worked new out of the box, no luck. When I click on the iWeb icon a small window pops up:
Can't open file "~/Desktop/WebSite/About_Me.html."
Locked up. So is there a file that I can modify back to where I had it? Thanks

iWeb can't open html files. It can't import them, either.

Time machine Restore to new mac.

I have been using Time to back up my mac. Now that I have a new Mac Tower is it possible to use Time machine to move files over to the machine.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You can't do a full system restore, since there are differences in OSX for the two machines -- one Mac's OS won't run on a different model.
But you can "migrate" from the old one.
If you haven't set up your new Mac yet, at the end of that procedure there's an option to migrate (I'm not sure that's the exact word) from another Mac or a backup. It's probably easiest to connect the old Mac and migrate from it; but you can use your TM backups instead.
If it's already set up, you can use the Migration Assistant (in your Applications/Utilities folder) similarly, either from the old Mac or the TM backups.
You do need to be careful, however, if your old Mac was a PPC machine, as some 3rd-party apps may not work on your new Intel Mac. Take a look at Kappy's post here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7845144#7845144

Time Machine restore to new computer

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