When trying to restore from time machine system won't find my hardrive

Last night I open up my MacBook Pro and it was non-responsive. It had been working fine earlier that evening. I hadn't dropped it or jarred it (that I remember). However, when I tried to open up Safari, everything froze. All I got was the spinning beach ball. Eventually I did a hard reboot, and when my computer came back up, it went directly to a directory with disk recovery, restore from back up, reinstall Maverick, and ask questions.
I tried to repair with the disk utility, but there was an error whenever I did.
I next tried to recover with my time machine back up. However, when I attempt this time machine cannot find a disk to install to.
Is my hard drive dead? Is there a fix that I'm not seeing?
Thanks.

Try a manual restore to a different Mac.. the new hard disk means the Mac is now seen as a new machine.
See Q14-17 here. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
Particularly 17..
I think you might have had the rental using TM to backup to the old backup which may have got things really confused.

Similar Messages

Macbook stuck on startup when trying to restore from time machine

Recently, my MacBook Pro (running 10.6.3) crashed and when I tried to restart, it got stuck on the grey startup screen with the Apple logo with the spinning gear beneath it. I tried several times to start my Mac up, but each time it got stuck on that screen. I left it for an hour and came back with the same screen still up.
I then booted up off the install disc and used the disc utility to check my HDD status. It reported a fatal error in my HDD so I bought a new hard drive. After installing the new hard drive in my macbook, I once again booted up from the install disc and told it to restore my hard drive using my last time machine backup (which was created one day before the initial crash). Once again, the computer got stuck on the grey startup screen mentioned above.
I force-shutdown and started up again off the install disc. This time, I installed Snow Leopard fresh without any restoration from a previous backup and my computer started up just fine. Since then, I have tried numerous times to restore my machine from several time machine backups made in the last few weeks and each time, it stalls when I try to boot up. But each time I install Snow Leopard by itself, everything works normally.
What's going on in the time machine backup that is causing all of this? Is there some kind of startup routine that just gets stuck in a loop that I can delete from my time machine backup files? Please help!

Sly Park Mark wrote:
After installing the new hard drive in my macbook, I once again booted up from the install disc and told it to restore my hard drive using my last time machine backup (which was created one day before the initial crash). Once again, the computer got stuck on the grey startup screen mentioned above.
Two possible causes:
You used a Leopard install disk, instead of a +Snow Leopard+ one. All you needed to do was install Snow Leopard over it; but since you've now done other things, your best bet is to just do it over, using a Snow Leopard disc.
Whatever was going wrong with your internal HD damaged some things on your system, and that damage was backed-up, so is restored along with everything else. In that case, do it over, but select an earlier backup.

IPhoto crashes when trying to restore from Time Machine

Yesterday I did a clean install and then upgraded to Snow Leopard. Prior to wiping my HD I backed everything up on Time Machine. I had over 5000 pics on iphoto and only want to bring back some. Every time I select a photo and hit "restore" I can hear the computer start working and then iPhoto "unexpectedly quits" I was and still am using iPhoto '08. Any ideas as to why this is happening or how I can recover my photos?
Thank you,
Mark

Mark Seay wrote:
Every time I select a photo and hit "restore" I can hear the computer start working and then iPhoto "unexpectedly quits" I was and still am using iPhoto '08. Any ideas as to why this is happening or how I can recover my photos?
Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.
I've seen people report having success restoring their entire iPhoto library from a Time Machine backup by using the Finder.
If you use the "more options" link in this discussions group's search box and use the search term "iPhoto AND restore" (without the quotes), you'll see a number of results, including this one:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12892641

I tried to instal 10.8.3 to my MBP and it crashed. I then tried to restore from Time machine but when it is about 50% through a message comes up "the files cannot be restored"

I tried to instal 10.8.3 to my MBP and it crashed. I then tried to restore from Time machine but when it is about 50% through a message comes up "the files cannot be restored" Can anyone help me to get out of this mess?

Back up all data.
Boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at the startup chime. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.
Note: You need an always-on Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet to use Recovery. It won’t work with USB or PPPoE modems, or with proxy servers, or with networks that require a certificate for authentication.
When the OS X Utilities screen appears, follow the prompts to reinstall the OS. You don't need to erase the boot volume, and you won't need your backup unless something goes wrong. If your Mac was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade, so make a note of those before you begin.

Trying to restore from Time Machine - HELP please

I tried to restore from time machine this morning...and am getting this error :good morning, "an error occurered (2) while copying, there is no such file or directory"
any idea?????
TIA

lol, it didn't say goodmorning.
Last night my mac froze, i had to turn it off buy the button on the back...i tried to turn it on, it just hangs at the gray screen with the apple on it and the little circle things goes around and around and around. I put in my leopard OS disk and went to utilities to do a disk scan repair, it said no valid packages found...i dont know what to do with that...Ithought i could do a simple restore from my time machine...what you saw above is the error i got...
I don't know what to do or how to get my machine back to normal.
Can you help me?

Lost all photos on my iPhoto and get the ERROR WRITING TO DISK when trying to reload from Time Machine. iPhoto cannot import your photos because there was a problem writing to the volume containing your iPHOTO LIBRARY . Looking for solution.

Lost all photos on my iPhoto and get the ERROR WRITING TO DISK when trying to reload from Time Machine. iPhoto cannot import your photos because there was a problem writing to the volume containing your iPHOTO LIBRARY . Looking for solution.

Problems such as yours are sometimes caused by files that should belong to you but are locked or have wrong permissions. This procedure will check for such files. It makes no changes and therefore will not, in itself, solve your problem.
First, empty the Trash, if possible.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
find ~ $TMPDIR.. $ -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 $ 2>&- | wc -l | pbcopy
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear.
The output of the command will be a number. It's automatically copied to the Clipboard. Please paste it into a reply.
The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.

When attempting a restore from Time Machine I get error code -8004. What is this and how can I correct it? Thanks

when attempting a restore from Time Machine I get error code -8004. What is this and how can I correct it? I use OX 10.9.3
Thanks

Run it in compatibility mode and input the credentials.
Mylenium

Installed new harddrive and I am trying to restore from time machine external back up. I restarted the computer and held the Command key and the R and the restore utility does not appear. what can I do

I installed new hard drive and I am trying to restore from time machine external back up. I restarted the computer and held the Command key and the R and the restore utility does not appear. what can I do

Command + R keys are for Macbooks running Lion and Mountian Lion only. ( i could be wrong on this)
you have a couple of options:
Do a clean install of Snow Leopard via Install DVD.
Clone your old hard drive to your new hard drive via Carbon Copy Cloner
Or click on the link below to give you a better idea.
Hope you get it sorted out.
http://pondini.org/TM/14.html

Strange error trying to restore from time machine sparsebundle

I had my iMac hard drive go bad, so I replaced it, powered the unit back up and booted into the Snow Leopard install disk.
I got to the step where I'm trying to restore from my Time Machine .sparsebundle and I selected the date and time of the backup I wanted to restore. When I click Next to go the next screen (Select a Destination) the utility gets stuck "Searching for Disks," and below that a warning icon says
"This disk does not have enough space to restore your system."
This sounds scary, and as the Time Machine drive now has the sole copy of my data I'm reluctant to do anything to it.
Does anyone know what's going on?
Thanks in advance,
Dan.

Are you sure the new drive is formatted properly?
Check it via Disk Utility (you can get there from the same Utilities menu where you selected +Restore from backups).+
Select the top line of the drive (with size and make). Be sure the *Partition Map Scheme* at the bottom says +GUID Partition Table.+
Then select the next line, with the name you gave it, and be sure the Format shown towards the lower left is +Mac OS Extended (Journaled),+ unless you made it +Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitive, journaled),+
Also see how much space it shows for Available to the right.

Restore from Time Machine. Won't restart. Stuck on "you need to power off" screen

New 500GB HD
Full restore from Time Capsule.
Took forever but did finish.
Screen now says "you need to restart your computer. Hold down the poer button until it turns off. Then press the power button again". I get the Apple screen and start-up chime. And then this screen again.
How to get out of this loop ?

MetalKaryn wrote:
Once OSX is installed, and I finish this, do I install the combo update? You mentioned that I will probably have to do that. Do you know if something will prompt me to let me know that I need to download the combo update?
Check what version of OSX you installed. It's probably printed on the disc, or click the Apple icon at the left of the menubar, and select About This Mac. That will display a small window showing, among other things, the version that's running.
If that's not 10.6.6, you'll need to download and install the "combo" to get back to 10.6.6. You could upgrade to 10.6.8 by getting that one, but it's not necessary.
Reading the link you provided again, do you think it be simpler just to start over and restore from the TC using the SL disc instead of the original MBA instal disc with Leopard? My mom only has about 25GB of data, so it is not a large database. Would this type of restore eliminate the combo issue? I have already gone through the restore about 5 times this weekend!
That might be faster and easier, and no, you wouldn't have to load the combo, since the full restore includes the version of OSX that was backed-up.
Installing OSX would take roughly 40 minutes, downloading the "combo" varies, of course, but they're close to 1 GB, so, especially if you can connect to the TC via Ethernet, that might be the best option.

Having trouble restoring from Time Machine

I replaced my HD, on my iMac 2007 Intel 20"' model A1441. After formatting I tried to restore from Time Machine, but continue to receive error messages saying it can't restore the drive. I went over to disk utilities & restored from there, but it renames my hard drive to "time Machine Backup" so I have two backup disks. Is there a way to rename it? Because all the data transfers over. The whole thing is very frustrating! My system was running on OS 10.8.5.

That's not how you restore from Time Machine. If you followed the instructions linked below and it didn't work, erase the volume and install OS X. When you restart, follow the prompts to transfer your data from a snapshot.
OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system

Cannot Reinstall OS X Lion OR Restore from Time Machine

With Firevault enabled, I attempted to reinstall OS X Lion from Recovery Mode. After being asked to enter the password to unlock the encrypted 'Mactinosh HD' disk, the reinstallation began. Everything seemed fine until the install process was supposedly finished, then a window popped up explaining that there was an error and to try again. I tried again and the same thing happened. I also tried to restore from Time Machine with no success (the same thing happened). I opened Disk Utility via Recovery mode and verified/repaired the 'Macintosh HD' disk and its permissions, but the reinstall/Time Machine restore still fails. Then I erased the disk with Disc Utlilty, and attempted this again with no success. My computer no longer boots into OS X at all (it didn't even before I erased the disk via Disk Utility). It can only boot into Recovery Mode or Windows--I'm basically running a pretty overpriced Windows PC.
I am using a 21" iMac with an Intel Core i5 processor, CPU @ 250GHz, have 4 GB of RAM, and am (supposed to be) running OS X 10.7 Lion. Right now I'm using Windows 8 Consumer Preview x64 bit on a Bootcamp partition on the same computer if that matters to anyone. If there's any useful information I could provide to help you help me then please let me know! This is a pretty sucky issue that I'm having a great a deal of trouble and frustration with and any help would be very very appreciated.

Whenever I try to do this it says "Error trying to turn off encryption". The message does not offer much in the way of an explanation aside from that. Maybe that's simply an 'incorrect password' message? I entered my adminstrator password which works to unlock the drive, but apparently not to turn off encryption unless the error has nothing to do with my password. I opted to have Apple hold on to my Filevault restore key which I was too lazy to write down when I first enabled the feature, so if that is the password required to turn off encryption I suppose I'll need to call Apple Care to retrieve it. =/
By the way, the computer no longer boots into reguar Recovery Mode but now boots into internet recovery. Interestingly enough, another attempt at Time Machine recovery also appeared to work (saying that it was done successfully) but in fact it didn't.
Also, whenever I try to change startup disc to Macintosh HD it says "Error: Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed". Whenever I restart holding the Options key to view available drives/partitions, only Windows and My Passport (external hard drive) appear.

89 hours for Restore from Time Machine backup!! Is this typical?

Trying to restore my iMac after a hang up in the boot process....grey screen----->apple----->progrees bar to 1/10 full----->shutdown.
Troubleshooting steps thus far,
-Booted from Lion install USB.
-Ran Disk Utility and all tests show that the startup drive is in good order.
-Went to Restore from a Time Machine backup and chose Iomega USB 2.0 backup drive.......internal HD would not show up in destination list.
-Went back to Disk Utility and erased internal HD and formatted for HFS+ (Journaled)
-Tried to restore from Time Machine again, was able to select internal HD as destination this time.
-Estimated time.......89 HOURS!!!
24" iMac (Mid 2007)
2.8 Ghz Core 2 Extreme
4 GB Ram (667 Mhz)
500 GB HDD (ATA)
2 TB Iomega USB 2.0 backup drive.
I understand this machine is no spring chicken, however, this amount of downtime seems excessive. Why so slow? Any ideas to speed it up?
Thanks.

Sounds like your internal HD may be failing.
If it's working slowly, having to do numerous retries, etc., everything will be very slow.
Note that Disk Utility won't necessarily find that sort of problem with a HD; it only checks the file system on the drive for consistency -- all the various directories, catalogs, etc.
Less likely, but possible, are problems with RAM, the USB drive, the USB port on your Mac, or even the USB cable.
Unless you're well into the restore, you might want to try running this: Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test. Run the Extended tests (that may take an hour or more, depending on how much RAM you have). Write down any error code(s) it shows.

How to Restore from Time Machine in Single-user mode?

Hi there, I am trying to fix a Macbook Pro that has had its /private folder trashed and emptied. Obviously it won't boot unless you you boot in to Single User mode and I'm wondering if its possible to do a Time Machine restore from the terminal, I would need the 2nd more recent Time Machine image which is sitting on a Firewire HDD.
I was going to just see if I could find the orignal OSX install disk and just do a fresh install of the OS which I don't mind doing (since everything important is backed up in Dropbox), but I can't seem to find the CD anywhere nearby, so the Time Machine option would be much preferred.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Not sure if this is related enough, but I just wrestled trying to restore from time machine too, trying to reinstall 10.5.8 after putting a new HD in my MBP, 2006 vintage.
That took sooooo long to get back to where I was before swapping disks; what did the trick was ordering a free copy of Snow Leopard install disk (free due to Apple trying to push people from idisk to icloud) which was rushed FedEx (yay) and which allowed me to access Time Machine where my ancient original OSX install disk had not.
And all it took was 2 weeks of cursing!

How to restore from time machine for another user login

I use time machine to back my computer which has multiple user login.
First I set up time machine backup using User A. I checked that User B files in the hard disk is also backed up, and I can restore using User B login.
Then I changed the hard disk today and all users I need to recreate again.
After recreating users, I found that User A can restore files from time machine backup.
However, files originally under User B cannot be restored using either User A and User B. The error message is
"The folder “Documents” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents."
Anyone can help?

Not sure if this is related enough, but I just wrestled trying to restore from time machine too, trying to reinstall 10.5.8 after putting a new HD in my MBP, 2006 vintage.
That took sooooo long to get back to where I was before swapping disks; what did the trick was ordering a free copy of Snow Leopard install disk (free due to Apple trying to push people from idisk to icloud) which was rushed FedEx (yay) and which allowed me to access Time Machine where my ancient original OSX install disk had not.
And all it took was 2 weeks of cursing!

When trying to restore from time machine system won't find my hardrive

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