Time machine won't restore to my new MacBook Pro

Early 2011 15" MacBook Pro is now needing its fourth new keyboard/logic board in one year.
So I bought a new 15" MacBook expecting to easily migrate to it. Migration Assistant did well moving the applications over but failed with my Documents.
I concluded that I would restore my documents using Time Machine backups.
Except that Time Machine won't allow me to see the documents that need to be restored. I did the "Inherit older backups" thing, and there IS a pink time line showing the older machine backups - I just can't access them.
Any thoughts on how to resolve this?

Since you have both machines connected why don't you use Migration Assistant to transfer your Home folder? Or you can simply drag your documents from the old computer's connected hard drive.
I hope you realize that Migration Assistant will not transfer your Home folder if you have a new Home folder with the same name. Instead it will create a whole new Home folder with a different name. Have you checked to see if you have two user folders located in your /Users/ folder?

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Hi, ive been backing up my computer to an external hard drive (with time machine). When i buy a new macbook will that hard drive put all my info on to the new computer?

hi, ive been backing up my computer to an external hard drive (with time machine). When i buy a new macbook will that hard drive put all my info on to the new computer?

When you boot the new machine for the first time, you'll be prompted to import your data from a Time Machine backup.

I messed up badly by trying to restore my brand new macbook pro by doing restart then command R and choose disc utility repair now when I start ,all I get is the white screen with a folder and a question mark,What can I do???help please

I messed up badly by trying to restore my brand new macbook pro by doing restart then command R and choose disc utility repair now when I start ,all I get is the white screen with a folder and a question mark,What can I do???help please

Can you still boot to the Recovery partition using Command and R whilst booting? Or did you wipe the Recovery partition as well?
If your Recovery partition is still intact, you can simply boot to it and reinstall the OS via the Internet. If you wiped the Recovery partition, you can hold down Command, option and R keys whilst booting and boot into true Internet Recovery mode. You'll be able to reformat the hard drive, erasing all partitions (format it as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" with a dingle GUID partition) and then reinstall the OS that shipped with your machine.
Note that you should use a physical Ethernet connection when restoring over the Internet - it's three times slower if you use wifi.
Try your Recovery partition first and if that doesn't work, use Internet Recovery.
Clinton

When I try to access my online bank account thru Firefox, the session times out. This is on a new Macbook Pro. On my old Macbook Pro I can access the site.

When I try to access my online bank account thru Firefox, the session times out. This is on a new Macbook Pro. On my old Macbook Pro I can access the site. I know it is probably something in settings but cannot figure it out.

Hello,
'''Try Firefox Safe Mode''' to see if the problem goes away. [[Troubleshoot Firefox issues using Safe Mode|Firefox Safe Mode]] is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily turns off hardware acceleration, resets some settings, and disables add-ons (extensions and themes).
'''If Firefox is open,''' you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu:
* Click the menu button [[Image:New Fx Menu]], click Help [[Image:Help-29]] and select ''Restart with Add-ons Disabled''.
'''If Firefox is not running,''' you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:
* On Windows: Hold the '''Shift''' key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
* On Mac: Hold the '''option''' key while starting Firefox.
* On Linux: Quit Firefox, go to your Terminal and run ''firefox -safe-mode'' <br>(you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)
When the Firefox Safe Mode window appears, select "Start in Safe Mode".
;[[Image:SafeMode-Fx35]]
'''''If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode''''', your problem is probably caused by an extension, theme, or hardware acceleration. Please follow the steps in the [[Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems]] article to find the cause.
''To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.''
When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help others with the same problem.

Time Machine won't restore a critical backup - disk space not sufficient error

Using Time Machine Restore Backup says my Macintosh HD has 55 GB available. I need to restore a 50GB Time Machine Backup from an external disk to the Macintosh HD device as the transfer destination of the restore copy it it gives me a message 'This Disk does not have enough space to restore your system'. In fact trying to restore all my many time backups over the past months give the same error even though the backup size is less then my Macintosh HD destination.
So I used the Time Machine software to delete many of my documents in the backup that I want to restore, now it is 30 GB through the Time machine finder, but restoring still gives me the same error. However, time machine made a new backup of my system today of 30 GB but when I go through the backup process using this, there is no error about there not being enough space.
It seems although the finder in Time Machine recognises that file is just 30 GB, in the restore process it doesn't recognise that file has been reduced to 30GB

If you're trying to add a large amount of data all at once, and you get an alert of insufficient space, then from the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences... ▹ Time Machine
If the padlock icon is closed, click it to unlock the settings and authenticate. Turn Time Machine OFF, then back ON and close the preference pane. Restart the computer. Test.

Time machine won't restore back to lion

Mountain Lion is causing me big problems. My external firewire 800 hard drives will not stay mounted and my fans are running at full speed after waking from sleep. Restarting fixes these problems until it sleeps again. Sometimes it takes several restarts.
So I am trying to revert back to Lion the day before I foolishly upgraded to ML and Time Machine will not allow me to restore any of my old backup prior to ML. How can I get rid of ML without loosing data and taking up tons of my time?

Time Machine will not allow you to go back to a previous OS version, unless you are running that version. So if you are running Mountain Lion, it will only restore to ML back ups.
Others have done what you want to, if you have a OS X LION install disc/usb. You will have to manually copy over data as you should always back up your system regardless.
Source; Derek Currie https://discussions.apple.com/message/19105493#19105493
"Time Machine does not provide bootable backups. Therefore, this is not the solution.
If you bought Lion, you should be able to re-download it from the Mac App Store. (Sadly, Apple pulled the ability to actually buy Lion off the store). You should be booted to another volume other than the one you will be installing to. You may have to disable the installation on the disk you wish to move back to Lion. I'm not certain, but suspect that trashing the ML System folder would do the job. The Installer will probably notice the missing OS and allow the Lion install. If not, then you'd have to go to the root directory of that volume, make invisible files visible and trash the 'Kernel' files and try again to install Lion.
Ideally you can use the Time Machine backup to restore just about everything else. But you may find everything works fine after the install.
I beta tested 10.8 Mountain Lion and know that it had a couple remaining bugs upon release. That's what updates are for. I expect there will be a rapid release of 10.8.1 update via the Mac App Store. It may well be worth hanging in there with 10.8. It is most definitely an IMPROVEMENT over Lion, whose Finder bugs I absolutely hate. (But that problem may soon be solved with the 10.7.5 update coming soon).
If you look around the net you'll find there are instructions for creating a bootable Lion installer DVD or USB thumb drive as long as you have the Lion Installer on a hard drive. Here are a couple with illustrations:
http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/21/mac-os-x-lion-clean-install-explained/
http://mashable.com/2011/07/20/lion-clean-install-guide/"

Time machine back up and deleting photos from macbook pro

I have a macbook pro. I need to free some space on my hard drive. As I am a keen photographer I decided it was best to have at lest to back up in the event than one fails. I keep one off site at a friends. This way if the unthinkble happens.. fire, flood theft etc I do not lose all my images. To do this I require 2 hard drives. Having purchased the second I thought it would make sense to actually do a Time Machine back up as previous back ups were only of photos.
A few seaches of different forums appeared to say that you cannot delete photos from your Mac as this will be just Mirrored on your next Timemachine back up. This makes sense as it is copying the Mac so anything not on there will not be on the Time Machine back up.
SOLUTION : On your hard drive of the time machine back up create an addition folder or folders and using finder drag and drop from your macbook. This way it will not effect your Time Machine. You can replicate with the other hard drive. Having backed up away from the Time Machine will mean the photos do not get deleted by Time Machine after you have removed them from your Mac.
I hope this makes sense! It is the first time I have posted :-)
I would like to know if others have other solutions or use this method. I should say that the hard drive I use for the Time Machine if Mac formatted. It is a 2 TB WD My Book Studio. I purchased from the Apple store. It is not an apple product but is mac of the sleek aluminum and goes well with it. Having said that I keep it at a mates house!

There are several concepts that may help you create a defense-in-depth approach to securing your valuable data.
- Your data is much more valuable than external disk drives. Do not hesitate to purchase the size and number of external drives you need for great (not just good) backup practices.
- Always maintain at least two copies of any data. This means never place live (offloaded) files on a backup volume, even in a separate partition. If the drive fails the backup and the live files will go poof together.
- Do not rely on retrieving live files from a Time Machine backup. Time Machine is for restoring files that were deleted or altered by mistake or for a full restore. It is not for offloading live files.
- Place the offloaded live files on a separate disk drive. Then you will need to backup that live volume or if that offload volume fails then poof again.
- You already some of this base covered. Maintaing two copies (one backup) is good practice. Maintaining more than two copies (two or more backups) is a better practice. Maintaining multiple copies in multiple backup formats is a great practice. Time Machine is great for restoring accidentally deleted or altered data but it is a complex system that is more prone to failure than simpler schemes such as cloning. I recommend maintaining both Time Machine and cloned backups of the internal drive and cloned backups of offload drive.
Backing up the offload disk is where partitioning the backup drive can be handy. Create one partition for your Time Machine backup and another partition for your external drive backup. Backup your internal drive with Time Machine and backup the offloaded files using cloning software such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!
You could tell Time Machine to backup both your internal and external live files but then it gets tricky to do a full restore so I recommend using cloning software for backing up the external drive.
When you purchase another external drive, make it a sufficiently large one so you can divide it into multiple large partitions.
A good backup/offload map (two partitions per backup drive):
- Internal drive —> Time Machine backup partition A on the backup drives.
- External offload drive —> Clone backup partition B on the backup drives.
- Backup drives 1 and 2 (one onsite and one offsite), each with partitions A and B.
A great backup scheme includes three partitions on the large backup drives so you can backup the the internal drive with both Time Machine and CCC/SD:
- Internal drive —> Time Machine backup partition A on the backup drives.
- External offload drive —> Clone backup partition B on the backup drives.
- Internal drive —> Clone backup to partition C on the backup drives.
- Backup drives 1 and 2 (one onsite and one offsite), each with partitions A, B and C.
A great feature of having a clone of your internal drive is if the internal drive crashes you can boot off of the backup disk while you replace the internal drive. As mentioned above it also avoids Time Machine backup/restore problems. I have had Time Machine full restores fail so I do not trust them as my only backup method but I find them very handy for restoring individual files.
Create partitions sufficiently large enough for each backup source. Time Machine should be about 50% or more larger than the volume it is backing up to leave room for the older incremental backups. The cloned backup partitions need only be as large as the volumes they are backing up, or larger if you include incremental backups in your cloning scheme. This means you may need 2 or 3 TB backup drives. (4 TB drives are not yet reliable so avoid them.)
For more information on great backup schemes see:
Time Machine Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
Most commonly used backup methods:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
PlotinusVeritas gives some great suggestions for purchasing external hard drives in this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5602141?tstart=0

Data transfer from 08 macbook pro that won't start up to new macbook pro?

i have a 2008 macbook pro which won't start up properly, although, it will will start up with the Ctrl+T command which to my knowledge allows it to become like an external hard drive.
my question is, which cable will i need to transfer data to my newer macbook pro that only has thunderbolt connections, and what are the limitations to the files i can move over? basically i need all my document files, iTunes files, and garage band files...

1. You need a FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt adapter.
2. All of your personal files can be moved over.
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Netflix website won't load correctly on new Macbook pro.

The Netflix WEBSITE isn't loading correctly on my new macbook pro. The < > arrows used to scroll through movies on the homepage don't seem to be working. When you click/hover over them nothing happens. Also, the title and description box that usually appears when you hover your mouse over a movie isn't showing up either...and lastly the box where you can filter the movies you want to see in a specific category "Ex. "Dark comedies, Romantic comedies, Foregin Comedies etc.." isn't showing up.
Im assuming this is an issue with either safari or the macbook itself because I don't know what else it could be. I tried clearing all cookies,
cache, and history but it didn't help. The movies are streaming fine it's just the website that messed up. All other websites seem to be working fine though.

Probably a Java issue. Try another browser and also try loading Java from www.java.com. BTW, the current version won't run properly in Safari, so you'll probably end up running FireFox anyway.

FCE won't open on my new MacBook Pro - says I need a Quartz Extreme Card

I just bought a new MacBook Pro Laptop, and since I was having lots of hardware and software related problems with my old one, I clean installed everything rather than transferring things through archive.
Anyhow, I was initially able to register and install FCE from the original disk and then downloaded and installed all available upgrades. I opened it up, tried "Log and Transfer" to upload some video I'd shot on my Canon Vixia HFS10, and it worked fine. I saved and closed, but now, next morning when I tried to open FCE to edit my video it wouldn't open. A "Minimum System Check" came up that said "This system does not meet the following minimum requirements: Final Cut Express requires that your system have a Quartz Extreme Capable Video Card." I'm pretty sure that my NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT cards meet the requirements and that Final Cut Express just doesn't recognize that they are much better than the minimum requirements it is programmed to look for. How can I fix this? I saw another thread on a similar topic suggesting that someone delete their FCE, and then perform a clean install, but that's effectively what I've just gone through, and I'm not in the mood to spend a couple of hours seeing if the same thing I just did fixes the problem I have now. This seems like something that would be an easy programming fix, probably a simple modification to a preferences file, but I wonder if anyone out there has the solution?
Message was edited by: nate.andersen

No, I have FCE 4 - should have said that - and it worked on my older Intel based MacBook Pro.
As it turns out, though, I think I've solved the problem, adapting a solution to a related problem I found on MacRumors.com. Don't know why this is necessary, but here's the solution I tried:
1. right click on the FCE application icon and select "Show Package Contents"
2. open the "Contents" folder and then open the "info.plist" folder in Text Edit
3. find the line that says: "<key>AELMinimumQuartzExtremeCapable</key>," and replace it with "<key>AELMinimumGeForceCapable</key>", and then make sure that the next line says "<string></string>" without any number specified. Or, if you have some other kind of graphics card that you know is compatible, you could say what that is instead of GeForce. I found it doesn't work just to delete this line completely.
Again, I don't know why Apple didn't build in this flexibility when they updated their standard Graphics cards, but in any case this solution seems to work.

LP8 won't install on my new macbook pro (ver 10.8.4).

I purchased LP8 a couple years ago, installed it on my desktop, then purchased and installed the upgrade to LP9 when that came out. (My desktop is the only computer that I've installed LP on).
I just bought a new Macbook Pro running OS X (ver. 10.8.4), however, when I tried installing LP8, the macbook wouldn't install b/c the program was too old and is therefore incompatible.
I don't have to purchase an entire new set of LP in order to get it on my new laptop, do I? I still have plenty of those LP ugrade coupons left, so I don't want to re-purchase the DAW.
Thanks...

Sorry, but when Logic Pro 8 was released (2007) 10.5 was the most current OS X version. We are now at 10.8 and that OS doesn't support some of the old applications anymore. 6 years have passed since.

Time Machine problem after restoring to a new HD (after my original HD failed)

I am running Lion 10.7.5 on a MacBook Pro Late '11
My HD was getting SMART errors, so I did a complete back up using Time Machine using a WD My Passport 1TB external, and then sent my MBP to Apple for HD replacement (under my Applecare plan).
I collected it yesterday and restored my system using Time Machine (using the data from my external HD) and everything was restored perfectly, which was great,
However, I'm now encountering a problem after plugging my external HD back into my MBP on the new system. Rather than Time Machine doing a swift 'top up' back up, it appears that TM is attempting to do a full back up. (I have 300GB and it took nearly 24hours to backup on the faulty drive) Is this normal after installing a new HD? Bearing in mind the Time Machine data is still on my external drive?
It's also appearing to be taking FOREVER to do this entire back up again. It is stuck on 'preparing back up' and when I do get some movement, it's doing a couple of KB's at a time and with no genuine back up progress.
Fundamentally, I just want to just top up my Time Machine back up without having do a complete back up, again. (which doesn't actually seem possible, viable at the min)
Any help / support would be much appreciated

AFAIK, it'll do that since the HD has a different UUID and the old TM backup won't recognize it. See Pondini's TM FAQs, for starters.

Time Machine won't restore: don't have permission

I am trying to restore a project folder containing website files. It was backed up originally when I was using Leopard and then again after the Snow Leopard upgrade. I need access to the pre-snow leopard files, which are visible in time machine. When I click "restore", however, time machine creates a blank folder and gives me the message: "the operation can't be completed because you don't have permission to access [name of file]."
Nothing has changed besides the operating system. The computer and the backup disk are as they have always been. The computer has only one user, so it's not a user conflict. I've reset permissions and restarted. I have tried restoring to several different locations, including the file's original position and the desktop, as well as replacing and keeping both.

Cheryl, How was that Snow Leopard installation performed?
a. Did you simply install SL over Leopard, thus preserving your user data?
b. Did you install SL and create a new user account
c. Did you erase the Macs' HD, install SL, and then Migrate your legacy user account from a Time Machine backup?
Depending on how you perform the upgrade will determine whether you can get at your old data or not. Was there a point after the SL installation that you recall Time Machine popping up a message that the existing backups originated somewhere else but offering you the opportunity to resume current backups to the same set? If so, your legacy user account may ow be inaccessible?
I and others have discovered that once an account has been migrated, both Time Machine and Migration Assistant won't let you recover further data from the old backup set (I intend on filing a Bug Report on this by the way).
However, there is a way around this.
CTRL-Click the Time Machine icon in the Dock and select "Browse Other Time Machine Disks…".
Select your Time Machine backup drive and the 'star field' interface will launch. This approach will allow you to navigate back to the user folder or item you wish to Restore. You will likely be prompted for the username and password of the old account, but you will be able to move the data.
Once the Restore is complete You should be able to now go into this restored folder and change the permissions of the folder or item you are trying to access.
Highlight the file/folder and select Get Info from the File menu.
Click the tiny gold lock icon at the bottom. You will be asked for your current admin username and password. Now click the tiny "+" button on the left. In the resulting window select your current user account and click "Select".
This should have added your current username to the list under Sharing & Permission. Under "Privilege" change "Read only" to "Read & Write". Now, if the item you are dealing with is a folder, then click the tiny Gear icon at the bottom and select "Apply to enclosed items...".
You will be warned that you can't undo this but click OK anyways. When finished close Get Info and you should now have full access to the item in question.
(Make sure that, if it is iLife data you are moving (iPhoto, iTunes, etc), that you have run Software Update and updated your applications. Otherwise, any attempt to import the old data may result in alerts telling that it was created with a newer version.)
Let us know if this resolves your issue. Cheers!

Mac Crash, Time Machine won't restore different osx?

Hey All,
Yesterday my beloved Mac decided to die in the *** after an OSX update, it was running fine before I put in the dreaded update.
I tired everything possible to get the Mac going again to no avail, so ended up having to put in the origional disk (osx 10.5.6), this worked a treat and got the old girl going again, however when I instructed it to use the time machine to restore, it ran for probably about 5hrs then said it couldn't be performed as the time machine was running a different OSX.
Iv tired to restore it going into the desktop, opening time cap and trying to restore from there - I get the same issue.
Also tired to go into the finder, time machine, data, imac_0023dfa.sparse and selected that and got the same issue - OSX
I have no idea what to do next?
Can I update to 10.6.3 without doing all of the inbetween updates (this is what time was running on)
Driving to an apple store, is a 5 day drive or a 6hr flight... so not really an option.
Please help
Thanks in advance for any advice

Since you have both machines connected why don't you use Migration Assistant to transfer your Home folder? Or you can simply drag your documents from the old computer's connected hard drive.
I hope you realize that Migration Assistant will not transfer your Home folder if you have a new Home folder with the same name. Instead it will create a whole new Home folder with a different name. Have you checked to see if you have two user folders located in your /Users/ folder?

Time machine fails to restore files to new mac

This is really frustrating. I've probably used TM 8-10 times to upgrade hard drives, upgrade macs, etc. It's always worked flawlessly.
Wednesday I received my new MB Pro (a maxed out late 2013 that MacMall has been clearing out at a great price). So in preparation for delivery I made sure my TM backup was current and ready to go. So connected the backup drive to the new MBP and fired it up. As usual, I selected the option to "restore from Time Machine." I selected the disk and back and let it run. The progress bar said it was going to be about 1-1/2 hrs so I went off to do other things.
When I returned the restore had finished and I was looking at exactly the login screen from my old MBP. I was ready to go, or so I thought. The first thing I noticed that the dock wasn't right - it wasn't mine, just the generic one you see on a new Mac. Checked my applications and it was soon apparent that none of my apps were listed - no Office, Parallels, or a dozen (or more) 3rd-party apps. Zip. Zero. Nada.
Checking more, my Documents folder was empty, along with my iTunes library.   So I launched Disk Utility and the firs thing I noticed was that there was only 10 GB on the new drive, yet the old drive (and the backup file) is over 630 GB!
I've never seen this before, and so far Apple support doesn't have any answers.

We've tried quite a bit - here's a summary.
Since I tried first with MA, we decided to wipe the HD and start over, using Setup Assistant.   I booted into Recovery, used Disk Utility to wipe the disk, then download and install a clean Yosemite. This time I used Setup Assistant when it rebooted, and selected the TM restore. The SA window where you select what to install showed about 500 GB, so I selected everything. SA ran for a little over an hour. When it finished and rebooted I had my user accounts and setting, but again no apps or files. Instead of 500 GB I had a little over 10 on the drive. Basically same as the first try with MA.
By now I'm into upper-tier Apple techs. Next I wiped the backup files and created a brand new one. I have an "emergency" admin account so this time we logged into that one and launched MA. This time we selected everything except this emergency account. Again, MA ran for over an hour, but as before, nothing transferred.
With my tech on remote access we browsed the folders of the backup and were satisfied everything was in the backup. At this point he advised me that - worst case - I could always drag-and-drop everything to the new drive though it would leave more cleanup than a restore.
I did notice something odd about the backup when I used SA & MA. When I got to the window to select the backup I had two items - one for about 450 GB and the other was smaller at about 100. Since the larger one had all the accounts I used that one. With the help of the tech I finally figured out this was probably caused by my small eDrive partition.
This time I updated TM prefs to make sure everything was excluded except the main partition. Wiped the backup drive and created a new one. When finished I plugged the drive into the new MBP and launched MA. This time I only saw one backup to select, so did that and selected everything to migrate. According to MA that should be about 500 GB.   MA ran for about an hour, but again nothing transferred except my account info.
Lastly (for now), I wiped the MBP drive, installed a fresh Yosemite, and this time used Setup Assistant to migrate. Selected all 500GB and it ran for a little over an hour.   Again, nothing transferred except accounts. In total, I had about 11 GB on the new drive instead of the expected 500+.
sorry for the long post.

Time machine won't restore to my new MacBook Pro

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