OS X :: Clean Re-install But Restore Files From Time Machine?
Oct 1, 2010
So my hard-drive died. Luckily I have a Time Machine backup of my system. I bought a new HD and tried to restore from the backup. No-go. It complains that it can't restore certain file, so it snorts the restore. I tried an older backup, no help.
So I decided to do a fresh install instead. But once I have OS up & running again, can I restore files from my old Time Machine backup? How does the process work? I'm afraid if I point Time Machone to my old backup, it will overwrite it.
I do have my files backed up manually as well, so I can always copy them by hand. Bit that backup is not as recent as the TM backup.
I ordered the $29 upgrade online. I was wondering if I could do a hard drive format and fresh install then restore my photos and documents and mp3s from my Time Capsule using Time Machine. This would probably free up even more HD space and make the OS cleaner and fresher, no? Would this be possible?
I'm going to reinstall Snow Leopard from scratch for the 6th time since I bought my MBP, which is a little over a month. Why? Constant freezes, lockups, beach balls (OMG I HATE THOSE DAMN THINGS). So I just want to start fresh... again again again again again again.
My question: if I restore from my Time Machine backup after I install Snow Leopard, what will happen? My SL DVD is 10.6. If I restore, will it go to 10.6.1? How is all of this going to work? I could just start completely clean and manually transfer my files from the Time Machine drive to where they usually are and be happy.
I need to do a clean install of Snow Leopard on my machine, but don't want to restore everything that is on my time machine. I have purchased much shareware software that I don't currently need and don't want hogging disk space.
Is it possible to do a partial restore of selected programs and their settings, or is it an all-or-nothing affair?
Did a clean install the other day to see if that'd help out my system's performance. Seems like it might just have done that.
1. Since a clean install helped me out, I guess it wouldn't be a good idea to do a full Time Machine restore. Or can I safely do that (since that would kinda be the easiest thing to do)?
2. If not, how do I restore all my settings and stuff. What about the programs that aren't just DMG files but have installed some of their stuff in some other folders?
3. I'm especially concerned with my iTunes library - since I sync it with my iPhone. How do I easily and fully restore that?
4. After solving all of this, how do I get my Time Machine back up running - without it starting "all over", as if it was a new machine?
I just got my new Seagate Momentus XT, which is going into a late 2007 MBP. I got it because I'm running out of hard drive space and wanted a performance boost. My question is: should I just restore from Time Machine, or would I get a bigger performance boost with a clean install of 10.6, and reinstalling only the apps I currently use?
I know back when I used XP a clean install was a big performance boost itself, but with a mac, is it necessary or worth the hassle?
I decided to do a clean install of Mavericks to get rid of all the very old files hiding in my system folders. I made a start-up disk following online instructions, rebooted from the USB drive and wiped the drive and reinstalled Mavericks. Then I plugged in my Time machine backup drive and tried to recover particular folders from the latest backup. However, I am getting a permission error that prevents me from going into the old user folder from that backup. It has a red circle/line icon on the folder.
I'd like to try a clean install, but i also don't want to reinstall all my apps and settings, etc. But if i recover from a TM backup, won't it bring over all the crap to? I guess my question is, what exactly is on my TM backup? How would i do this?
am thinking about doing a clean install of Snow Leopard, but was wondering about the use of Time Machine in the Migration Assistant after it's re-installed. I have a lot of music, documents,apps etc (probably around 70-80gb) on my Time Machine backup that I would need to re-install. When you choose Time Machine in the migration assistant, does it let you choose what to pull off the Time Machine, or does it just take everything?
I recently bought an intel x25 160gb for my uMPB. I have a time capsule backing up my system so I just swapped in the new SSD and hit "restore from time machine backup".
About an hour later, the install was finished and everything looked exactly how I left it.
I can't understate how impressive that feature is by the way. However, I wonder if it might be better to do a clean install to really get best performance here.
I say that because I also installed a clean copy of win7 via bootcamp and it actually seems faster than OSX. For example, every common app; firefox, chrome, microsoft office, etc. launches faster in win7 than it does in OSX.
My OSX installation is about 18 months old without any clean installs, and I'm wondering if anyone here has noticed significantly better system performance with a clean install rather than a time machine backup.
I had the hard drive replaced in in my mid 2009 17" MacBook pro. After the clean install of lion I migrated my data from time machine (lion) to the new clean partition.. Upon completion the machine is unresponsive. The progress wheel turning for 10 minutes. I force quit and restart to kernel panic. I have been through this 3 times same sequence of events same results.
I just did a clean install of Snow Leopard on my older macbook. I did not specifically back up my itunes purchases, however, I did do several Time Machine back ups as well as manually moving data via Finder (copy "Macintosh HD" and paste to folder on external), and finally a clone using CarbonCopyCloner. I wanted to start fresh, but I failed to think of my iTunes purchases, as well as iPhone app purchases/downloads. Is there some way I can specifically restore iTunes from the back up without having to restore from a TimeMachine backup?
I have a 15" MacBook Pro 2.0 GHz from a couple of years ago. It has a 75 GB harddrive which I am upgrading to 500 GB. My plan has been to simply clone the drive using the enclosure I purchased. But after reading some posts here, I see I have a few options.
1. I could clone. This sounds the least risky since theoretically I should end up with everything exactly the same. I do wonder about how it clones the files the operating system is using at the time, but I guess I'll just trust it knows what its doing.
2. A fresh install sounds ideal. I have had my laptop for a couple of years, so I imagine a fresh install would do it some good. But what does that mean exactly? Is it basically starting from scratch? Would I have to reinstall everything, not just the OS but also all of my programs, individually? And then transfer all of my data (music, photos, etc) given that I can find it all? That sounds a bit laborious and what if I missed something? Or am I misunderstanding the process?
3. A few months ago I purchased a Time Machine and I have been using it to back up my laptop and my external harddrive. Can I really restore my entire internal harddrive from Time Machine? I'm pretty sure I would have set my Time Machine to back up everything especially since it's a 1 TB drive. Any drawbacks to doing it this way?
I recently erased my Mac partition of my hard drive and got a fresh copy on mavericks. I did this believing I would then be able to restore any important backed-up files later, now all I get in time machine is this:Â Â Â
Everything is greyed out apart from all my files and it stays like this for about five minutes. I know all the data is on the hard drive as it says 250GB of data is on it. Is it just searching through the Hard drive and I need to give it time for the files to show up?
I couldn't fine the Logic Pro X file titles "I still get letters", so i went to Time Machine. I wasn't able to find it until i searched for it. The only problem is it shows the file, but no path and if i restore it, nothing happens. Am i doing this wrong or is my file lost forever? Ill attach a screen shot. (A lot of the files on my time machine just show up white like that)Â
I'm trying to go back in time machine to when I had Leopard, but it won't let me, all those options are listed, but are grayed out. I can choose to go back in time to the days TM has backed up SL though?
When installing OS X I always try to cluster the OS related files at the outer tracks of the hard drive, where the disk is fastest. (See http://macperformanceguide.com/Stora...anYouNeed.html)
So I generally like to install OS X to an empty hard drive, and be done with all the OS related updates before I go on to install applications, copy user files etc. Most of the OS related files (depending on need for future updates) will now be clustered nicely together, making the machine as fast as it can be.
My question is: Does Time Machine "respect my efforts" here when doing a full restore? Will it place my system files at the outer tracks where they belong, or will it ignore the original placement of the files?
I got SMART warning about my hard disk, I got it replaced by a shop, but said I would do OS restore myself. (cant afford cost )Thought it would be simple - but it is anything but.  It appears my install DVD is damaged, so was not able to boot with Grey OS install disk - holding the C key.I managed to get iMac to boot up using the old disk - using firewire dock. However I was not able to restore old disk and OS to new disk, Due to IO read error.(this is why I had the SMART warning). So I am unable to get the OS on the new HD using the old disk or the DVD as these are both damaged.  The computer is running, so I thought I would try buying and downloading LION - then using the migration tool . The download is still running after 2 days.I went to apple store, and was told that they cannot replace DVD , so I should bring in the iMac = and pay for the restore. Dont wish to do this. As I have the computer and OS running, is there anything I can do to get a time machine restore from another backup disk (USB).
I just discovered that even though external drives can be backed up with Time Machine, Time Machine won't let you restore files from them if they fail. You can only restore files from a secondary drive if that drive is mounted, which is impossible if that drive has failed.
apple is sending me a replacement UMBP. I'm keeping the current one until the replacement arrives and then using a time machine backup on the new one. My time machine backup will restore the new laptop with all the old laptops files, programs, preferences, emails, everything as the old laptop's drive was without having to reinstall everything? Correct?I guess I could always swap drives as well, that might be quicker.
I've had a new hard drive installed on my iMac, (and the place that did it for me also installed 10.6 OS). Now, when I plugged in an external hard drive I had been using with time machine (and OS 10.5), and clicked 'restore' in the time machine interface, it transferred 200+gigs of data onto the new hard drive. However, I can't see any files anywhere - only see that that much space is now taken on the new hard drive. I've since read elsewhere that I should have used 'migration assistant' to do the job, but before I do this, I what to get rid of the 200+gig of data taking up room. How do I do this without a fresh install of the OS? (I don't have disks for 10.6). Or will the time machine restore (with migration assistant) not work between 10.5 & 10.6?
I've tried getting some answers to this from Apple support forums and my local mac forum but didn't get much info... I've removed some important language files while using monolingual (namely -English (American) -English (British) not realizing these are subset and required). I should've read the FAQ first... now some programs are appearing in weird character formats. Can I restore these language files with my Time Machine back ups? Which folder would I need to replace back with previous file? Since I did this only late last night, I should be able to just replace a certain system file folder, without causing much headache
I have an early 2006 iMac with 10.5.8, and I am having hard drive problems. I want to reformat my drive, then install 10.6. Can I do that, then restore my files with Time Machine? Will it restore applications?
Info: iMac 17" Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz 2Gb Mem, Mac OS X (10.4.8)
If I do a clean install and restore from TM, will I have to enter all my apps' serial numbers?
This is the only thing holding me back from doing a clean install on my 3 year old iMac. Does it even matter? I didn't do a clean install from Tiger to Leopard and it worked perfectly.
I just thought that starting from scratch would make the computer zoom like it used to.
I was just wondering how it works using Time Machine to get everything back on my Mac after installing SL via a clean install.. Will everything be exactly as it was before the wipe and install, or are there certain things, like Mail for example that will need to be reconfigured?
In my office one of my iMac's suffered a complete system crash. I am reinstalling OS X Lion as I write this post. The iMac was backed up to an external hard drive using time machine. After the new install of Lion how do I grab my user files from the machine backup?
I have my "mail" folder from Time machine. I tried to copy one email from the prev folder; but it's clearly not that simple as it doesn't show in mail.
I was thinking of doing a clean install of Snow Leopard. I back up via Time Machine to a Time Capsule. If I do a clean install, do I then just open Time Machine and then choose restore from the last backup or is not that simple.
