Help with a restore from an extretnal drive please

[NickCurtis62]

Hello
I want to restore the entire contents from an external hard drive, which is connected via a USB, to my internal hard drive.

My Mac is a :
A1260 with OSX 10.5.5
Intel 2.5 Core 2 duo. Fujitsu 250 internal hdd
Partition is GPT

My external hdd is a:
Toshiba v63600-c 1TB

Not sure of how the backup was setup as i just attached the external hdd as prompted. Backup looks to have all of the applications etc on it and ideally i want the full image on my internal hdd.
Have tried via Time Machine but it only seems to want to do a backup, with no restore option given.
I did read that an external device could be booted via certain keystrokes and then the backup carried out from there. To date i have had no confirmation on this. Can someone help please?

 

[priitv8]

Full restore from TM backup will be possible once you start the system recovery / reinstall.
http://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/

 

[NickCurtis62]

Is this not only available with Mountain Lion? My version is Leopard.

 

[KevinC867]

In order to do a full restore from the external drive, it needs to contain either a Time Machine volume or a bootable "clone" volume.

A Time Machine volume should contain a directory named "Backups.backupdb". A boot volume should have the Applications, Library, System and Users directories at the top and it should show up when you select "Startup Disk" from System Preferences. (Or press the option key while the system is starting up.)

If your disk doesn't contain a Time Machine Volume, or a boot volume, you may be out of luck and would need to first re-install the OS, then copy files from the drive.

 

[NickCurtis62]

Thanks Kevin
This is what i have on the external drive:
Backups.bacckupdp
then
Macintosh 2 (External hdd volume)
then
Latest Backup
then
\
and within this i have
Applications - iGrabit.plist - Library - System - Users - User Guides & Information

Do i have the required structure? If so, what do i do now?
Regards
Nick

 

[KevinC867]

It looks like you have a Time Machine backup volume on the drive. With Leopard, you will need to first boot from your install disk (press C during startup to boot from the CD drive). Then, select "Restore System from Backup..." from the Utilities menu.

 

[NickCurtis62]

Time Machine / Migration Assistant problems

Anyone?

Tried running through the Fix given by Kevin but that does not work.

More digging has revealed the following:
(please remember i have an internal 250gb, and an external 1tb which contains by backup)

Going into Applications, Utilities, Migration Assistant i then choose 'From Time Machine backup or other disk'.

System finds the Volume i want (191.9gb) plus another called Test (2.1gb). i check both to be selected and Continue

Next page tells me:
Applications - 3.6gb
Files & Folders - 352.2mb
Library - 5.6gb

Space remaining -157.2gb (?) Selected items - 201.4b

This obviously causes a problem and a message is given saying there is not enough space.

Taking a look at my backup drive i see that there are multiple older backups which i'm assuming are taking up excess disk space and not allowing me to restore my backup via Migration Assistant. Should i delete previous backup folders, which is my thinking, and will it in any way effect the latest backup i wish to restore?

ps When i load Time Machine it loads and shows all previous backups but offers no option to Restore any of them. The option button is there on the r/hand side but remains greyed out.

 

[KevinC867]

People usually run Migration Assistant on a new, empty machine. Your internal drive apparently has lots of stuff on it and Migration Assistant will try to add the stuff from the backup drive on top of that. That's why there is not enough room for your 192GB backup on your 250 GB internal drive.

I suppose you could start by deleting everything possible from the internal drive and then running Migration Assistant. However, If I understand your goal correctly, it would be cleaner to erase the internal drive and restore everything from the backup drive. That's what should have happened with the procedure I suggested. What went wrong when you tried to boot from the install disk and use the "Restore system from Backup" command?

 

[NickCurtis62]

Hello Kevin
I have just re-read my message re your suggestion not working, and i could have worded it far better, so apologies for that. I got so far and bailed when i got to the screen which asked me to select a destination to install OSX onto.

The internal drive has a fresh install of Leopard and nothing else. Out of 232gb in total it is showing only 43.8gb free. Doesn't that seem incorrect? OSX cannot be taking up so much space.

I followed your instruction and powered on holding down 'C', and loaded from the CD. This is what i get, screen by screen.
1. Welcome page for Leopard Installer
2. Licence text
3. Next screen is Select a Destination. This shows both my internal & external drives. When i select the internal i get this - "You cannot install Mac OSX on this volume without changing your installation settings. Click Options to change settings. You cannot upgrade this ver of Mac OSX because a newer version is installed".After this i bailed as i don't have the knowledge of Macs to go further.
On selecting the external drive it looked quite happy to load on OSX and informs me that is ONLY requires 14.5gb! Any idea what is eating up the space on my internal hdd?

 

[priitv8]

3. Next screen is Select a Destination.

Did you follow Kevin's advice above?

...(press C during startup to boot from the CD drive). Then, select "Restore System from Backup..." from the Utilities menu.

 

[NickCurtis62]

Latest news on backup / restore problem.

Took the Mac into my local Genius Bar.
They did a fresh install of Snow Leopard and hey presto! From initial boot i followed the prompts to restore from my external.

Many thanks to you all for your advice - much appreciated

 

[Tomb01]

Am also having an issue with migrating to my new MBP. I have a Super-Duper backup of my current 10.8.5 Mountain Lion drive, and on starting up my new MBP with Mavericks it sees the drive but shows Zero bytes of application or user files to migrate. Went ahead and let it finish, then tried using Migration assistant but same problem. Does not seem to be actually migrating from my old image. Apple support said to try direct connecting and using migration assistant with 'target mode' on the old machine, and will try that shortly.

Anyone else having issues with a Super-Duper backup? This is the first time in a number of iterations that I have had an issue migrating from one....