OS X :: Time Machine External HD Reinstall Get Everything Back?
Mar 4, 2009
Say my macbook pro crashes and I lose everything. However, I have been saving everything to an external drive using the Time Machine app. Can I use my external drive to get my computer to exactly the same state it was in before it crashed? By this I mean.
1) Desktop icons in the same places
2) System preferences all the same
3) Sticky notes all still exist and are laid out on the desktop just like previously before my hard drive crashed and I lost everything
4) My dock layout is exactly the same, same apps, same locations in the dock
I have been wondering this for quite some time. Because I know you can restore the essentials (i.e. Word documents, many different saved files) but what about little things like the above mentioned items?
I was told today by an Apple retail employee that Time Machine will not back up from anything other than an internal drive and I wanted to confirm whether this was the case. For example I have an iMac with a 750GB internal and I also have a 750GB external drive. I want to keep my iTunes Music and iPhoto libraries on the internal but keep all my movies on the external drive for space reasons. I want to then use a 2TB external drive to work with Time Machine. I was told that if I want to back up the 750 "Movies" drive that I will need to manually copy it because Time Machine will only back up the path of those files and that drive can't be included in the backup. To me this seems to go against what TM is about, since I then have to manually manage that part of the backup, adding new items, rather than getting the benefits of TM's incremental backup. Can anyone confirm or deny this. Second question is regarding TM for multiple machines. Can a 2TB drive be used as the TM drive for both an iMac and a MacBook or will the drive need to be partitioned?
I am finding conflicting information on this one. I have a 2TB drive plugged into my Time Capsule. This drive houses my music collection. Will Time Machine backup this drive? Â
Info: MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.6.7), Early 2011 13"
I have a 500Gb internal drive in my iMac, another 500Gb external drive (USB) and a 1Tb Firewire800 drive. Can I set up Time Machine to back up both my internal 500Gb drive and my external 500Gb drive to my external 1Tb drive?
Time Machine is backing up my internal 1Mac hard drive fine to an external drive ("backup ext drive"). I have another external hard drive attached to the Mac that I would also like to back up to the back-up ext drive. I've looked around on Time Machine as best I can but can't find any place that lists drives to be backed up, so I can tell Time Machine to back it up, also. I have found a list in Time Machine of drives I can back up to. That list shows both external drives. But of course, I want to back this one up, not use it as a back up drive. Should be something simple I'm missing. I've seen a lot in the forum about issues backing up external ard drives via Airport Express (or Extreme), but though I have Airport Express, both external drives (back up ext drive and the one to be backed up) are directly connected to the iMac, so I'm not trying to use Airport for this.
I had Time Machine making wireless backups from my MacBook to a LaCie hard drive plugged into an Airport Extreme Base Station. It's worked great for at least year. The 10.5.8 upgrade seems to have broken it. It's still not an Apple supported configuration.
1) I have a full external hard drive and would like to transfer all my time machine back-ups to a new larger one. How do I do this?
2) And when I'm ready to transfer all time machine data to my new iMac using external hard drive can I choose all dates so I'm including all pictures videos etc?
Mac Mini running 10.8.5. Time Machine will not back up brand new OWC MiniStack external HD. I've trashed TM prefs, reformatted the TM drive, verified that there are no exclusions, but it won't back up the external HD which contains only data files -- no system, no applications. TM does back up the internal HD.
I probably have all kinds of misconceptions about Resetting to an earlier time for the computer I have. It's a 2009 macbook, running OS 10.8.5. I got it last week, previous to this machine I have been running a powerbook G4. It does not have a backup with Time Machine either.
I'm an idiot, pleased to meet you.I had 2 external drives connected to my Macbook Pro, both had time machine back ups on...I meant to delete one of these but deleted the wrong one, and dragged it into Trash. On realising my mistake I tried to drag it back out of Trash, as you would normally but after "preparing to copy" for four hours it told me the drive was full...It's a 500gb drive, and the Time Machine back up is the only thing on it, so presumably it's just trying to copy itself when the back up is still present on the drive, albeit in the Trash.
I was trying to set up my Time Machine to an external hard drive. I didn't continue because it asked to "initialize" the hard drive which I had a lot of important things on.
I have another external hard drive I'd like to use but, my Time Machine has this error code of -43. What is this and how can I use my Time Machine on another external hard drive?
I just reinstalled my system on a new system drive and then used the migration assistant to transfer *only* the user accounts and not the settings or applications etc. I wanted (needed) to start relatively clean. The system after all of this is very similar to the original system (same apps, same users, mostly the same settings etc.) and I would like to continue using my old Time Machine back-up if I can, but when I start Time Machine it just wants to create a new back-up and won't recognize the older back-up. I've read up about what to do if you get a new TM disk or if your have your logic board replaced, but this situation seems different. I can't figure out what would appear different to TM about my "new" system.
So I've got a unibody MBP and connected to this I have a 320gb external drive I use to back up, but I only back up music, movies and documents so it's got 50 free gigabytes. I was hoping to partition off say 30gigs, install tinyxp and play games off this partition. But when I try and partition off 30, 25 or even 20 gigs Disk Utility tells me there's no free space on the hard drive.
So my questions are, how can I solve this issues, and would this idea work for playing games through windows anyway? I initially tried to get a bootcamp partition on my main Macintosh HD, but apparently there are files that cannot be moved in the way, and the only way to solve said issue is a complete reinstall of leopard, which I can't be bothered with seeing as snow leopards only a couple of months away.
I need to reformat my Boot drive because Ubuntu messed up my Master Boot Record and I can not run Boot Camp. I have a time machine back up of all my applications. Can I use this once I reinstall OSX?
I am going to replace my hard drive (and add RAM) on my Macbook Pro (mid-2009) myself. I have Lion (10.7.4) currently, and have backed up via time machine on an external drive. I don't have Lion on a usb, and from what I read, Lion Recovery via internet isn't applicable for my macbook (pre 2010). Is the time machine backup a bootable drive? If so, then am I all good so long as my backup is completed prior to replacing the hard drive? If not, how do I create a bootable drive so I can get back to "normal"?Â
I got the fatal folder with with question mark and grinding sound of the hard drive when starting my 2008 Mac Pro this weekend. After some diagnostics it was obvious the Hard Drive is dead, of course its the main drive that runs the OS and all my apps. I am picking up a new drive today and was wondering the best approach to get it up and running again. Everying it is backed-up on my external drive through Time Machine. Since the drive is dead I can't use a copy cloner to the new drive. Would I install the the hardrive and start the Mac Pro to boot off the Leopard CD, intall that and then try to run the backup from Time Machine?
I just got a new 1tb sata 2.5in and I want to install it, but I do not have my snow leopard disk. If I use a leapord disk will it reinstall snow leapord from my time machine backup or do I need to find my snowleapord disk?
I just received my refurb 1.8/SSD Air and I'm excited about getting it up and running. I'm confused about one thing. If I do a reinstall to delete printer drivers and languages, and then do a time machine migration from my MBP, would all of the drivers and languages reappear from the migration?
I want to wipe my system and only restore certain files to keep my system uncluttered and fresh. I use Time Machine so I thought I don't have anything to do now that everything is backed up. Someone told me once that Time Machine files can only be accessed by the user that created them (me). If I wipe my hard drive, that user will no longer exist. When I reinstall OS X, it will be a new user, so would that new user still be able to easily access and copy back the files from the Time Machine drive onto the internal drive?
I know there's a feature called "Browse other Time Machine Disks" but I don't know if that allows me to do anything I want and whether it will conflict with the new system. I also know about Migration Assistant but I don't want to use such automatic methods since I'm afraid it will restore problems from my old system. So in short, will I be able to easily get my files back one by one (not "all or nothing" like with Migration Assistant) from Time Machine when I will have my clean, freshly reinstalled OS X, with possibly a different username? Or does this only work if I type in the exact same user name as I am using now?
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 Utility, 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.
I had to recover my primary Macinstoh HD to a new disk from Time Machine, but somehow I now lost my Recover HD on the Macintosh HD. To do the initial recover I had to install Mac OS X Lion on a 2nd internal Hard Drive, but now I want to use Time Machine and go back to before I installed Lion, because the permissions are messed up and I can no longer use that disk 2nd disk, unless I continually enter the admin password. Now when I hold down Apple - R key during boot I no longer get to Recovery HD. I was able to see Recovery HD using the System Information app, then within the Serial-ATA section, but that Apple_Boot volume is gone.Â
Info: Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), How to reinstall Recovery HD...
My MBPro is getting cranky in a number of ways that indicate a reinstall of Snow Leopard is in order. After the requisite disk first aid check I attempted to run the installer only to get a dialog box telling me that the system cannot be installed because this disk is used by time machine. The MacBook disk is of course a source for back ups but not a back up drive. Even after restarting and explicitly turning off Time machine I get the same results.What do I need to set to allow the installer to run. The installer cd is a stand alone snow leopard install cd, not a machine specific cd.
I recently did a complete erase of my hard drive and re-installed Mavericks. I chose to start clean rather than use any Time Machine back-ups. I used the same external hard drive for my new Time Machine back-ups. Now I cannot open any back-ups/items prior to the re-install via Time Machine. They are listed along the right hand sidebar in Time Machine (star wars view) but will not open when clicked on.Â
Some files I can access if I go to the actual backup folder - ex a Pages doc BUT ff I try to open the iPhoto library from the back-up folders stored on the external drive, I get the following error message -
I cannot open the iPhoto "package" to access individual photos from these back-ups.Â
So - how can I get Time Machine to allow access to the pre-install back-ups??Â
Is it possible to back-up the contents of a NAS drive to a FireWire or USB2 drive using a Mac and Time Machine?
I know there are methods to get TM to back-up TO a NAS but if, for example, someone had their iTunes library on a NAS for access over a network- could TM be used to copy that drive for safe-keeping?
The path of the back-up would, basically, go like this:
NAS --> ROUTER --> IMAC & TIME MACHINE --> USB2/FW DRIVE
Sorry if this seems a simple one but searching for an answer just yields dozens of results for backing-up TO a NAS drive, not copying/saving the NAS itself.
Recently, I've figured out that when backing up, time machine only backs up some files, but not the entire thing... I see that this is a way to keep the size of the back up on a low level, true, but isn't it a bad way to back up your files?! Shouldn't it be full backups of the entire library?!
Second question; when I will set up my new mac machine I will buy this summer, is the integration really that easy and files do not get lost?! I am a bit skeptical as a few months ago I integrated data from my old computer to my mac (without using time machine, just regular back ups, manually) and some files were not being imported, god knows why.
Stupid question; when integrating the old files from time machine to a new mac, do they integrate system preferences / applications too? Cause I really have done lots of cool tweaking and it would suck to do all that stuff again...
Also, can I select the files I want to import or does it automatically import all the files from time machine to the new mac? A problem is that there is lots of (cookies, temp files etc.) stored on every mac and now, the quetsion is, does time machine import all these old/makingsystemslower/* little files too?!
What about the problem of leopard > snow leopard recovery?!
If I do a time machine backup - does it back up everything on all accounts or just the one I'm currently logged in as?The reason I'm asking is, I just bought a (used) iMac with a 250GB drive, and I have ordered a 760GB WD green drive. Can I just back up using Time Machine and then restore via Time Machine? I have four accounts on here - I'd rather not have to go through the pains of reinstalling everything.
