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HD crashed, can I restore new drive with time machine...?

M

MacNewbie07

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 27, 2007
20
0
I was doing backups to an external 3.5" drive with time machine, but didn't have it formatted as a startup disk. After my HD crashed, I put in my old HD (with OS 10.4) and plugged in the external again, but holding down the Option key when booting wouldn't give me the external as a boot disk.

So now I'm wondering, when I receive my replacement HD (and put 10.5 on it), if I will be able to do a full restore to what I had? I thought you had to boot from the backup disk to do a full restore? I never saw how to do it (only how to restore separate files) in Time Machine.

Any wisdom greatly appreciated.
 
alust2013

alust2013

macrumors 601
Feb 6, 2010
4,779
2
On the fence
Yep, that's what time machine is designed to do. All you have to do is boot from the installation disk, and choose restore in the utilities menu. Then you will select the disk (your time machine), and it will do its thing. Time machine isn't bootable though, which is why you had that problem. You will likely also need to use disk utility to format the new hard drive to HFS+
 
M

MacNewbie07

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 27, 2007
20
0
Ah, Time Machine isn't bootable eh?

I tried booting from the installation disk after my HD crashed but no luck (couldn't get that far). It will - presumably - work after I get my new HD put in and formatted.

Thanks for the info. Really appreciated.
 
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