Problems with Time Machine restore

[.princess.]

hey everyone-

so... i have been using time machine to back up onto my external hard drive for a few years now, and just now my hard drive crashed. i erased my drive, figuring it would be easy to restore from my time machine backups but... well... it hasn't been.

to make things a little more complicated, a while ago i used carbon copy cloner to make a copy of my harddrive on the same external hard drive. meaning, the same external harddrive that has my time machine backups also has a carbon copy of my old hard drive (but this isnt the version i want to restore.) it was probably a stupid idea to do all this on the same drive, but, i needed a drive i could boot from. and right now this is the only bootable drive i have. i dont have mountain lion, so i can't make one of those bootable drives.

so how do i restore from time machine? i dont' see any "restore from time machine" utility anywhere. i tried searching if i could download it somewhere, but i cant. will it be a problem if i try to restore from time machine while i am booting from the same drive that my time machine backups are on? where do i go to restore? is there a "restore from time machine" utility somewhere? it's not on the drive. i can't find it online. do i download it somewhere?

thanks!

~p

 

[Weaselboy]

What OS version were you on when you made the TM backup?

If you were on Lion 10.7.2 or later, there will be a recovery partition on the external TM drive. Just plug in the external then hold down the option key when you boot. You should see the TM disk as a boot option. Select that and you will see the recovery screen.

Once in the recovery screen, start Disk Utility and erase the drive. Then click restore... and wait for it to finish.

Why did you erase the drive to start with?

 

[.princess.]

thanks

it's 10.6.8. no partition, no 'recovery' option to click anywhere.

the only reason i am able to boot from the external drive is because i also have a carbon copy of the original drive (an older version of all my files and everything, including the system) on the external drive. i dont have any 'recovery' option. is there a utility somewhere that i can download in order to recover fromm the time machine backups on the external drive? i have all of the time machine archives but i cant find any program that will let me restore from them? or should i simply drag and copy one of the time machine archives onto the internal hard drive?

i tried starting up holding down command-r, but it wont give me the recovery screen. it just boots from the external drive. (it was probably a big mistake to put both the time machine backups and the carbon copy on the same drive)

this is really frustrating. how are you supposed to restore from time machine for older systems? time machine has been around much longer than os 10.7. how are you supposed to restore your hard drive on older versions of mac os? i dont have a partition. i dont have a moutain lion bootup flashdrive. where do i go to get a 'recovery' menu? is there an option somewhere that im missing? is there a utility that i download? how am i supposed to restore the entire hard drive from time machine?

thanks so much

~p

 

[Weaselboy]

Do you happen to still have the Snow Leopard install DVD? If so, you can hold the C key at boot then follow this guide to restore.

There is no separate restore utility you can DL for Snow Leopard. The command-r and recovery drive business is all new with Lion and Mt. Lion... you will not have it in Snow Leopard.

If you do not have the Snow Leopard install DVD, I have an idea that will work for you.

Option key boot to the clone. Then while running off the clone use Disk Util to format the new drive to Mac OS Extended. Then start CCC and (while still running off the external) clone the external to the internal.

Then reboot to the internal drive. You will now have your older version of your data and a Snow Leopard install running.

Okay... now make a new "temp" admin account (we will delete this when done so call ti whatever you want) then logout of your real account and login to the temp account. Go to Users and Groups and delete your real account and all the data in it.

Now start Migration Assistant from the /Applications/Utilities folder. When it starts point it to the TM backup on your external drive as the source for the migration. Check all the boxes on the list of things to migrate. This will pull in your real account again with current data from the TM backup.

Once the migration is done, logout of the temp account and login to your real account and make sure everything is there and looks good. If so, now delete the temp account.

That should fix you up.

 

[.princess.]

*phew* wow, ok. thanks so much. i think i follow you.

yes, i don't have the dvd, unfortunately

i will try what you said.

thanks!
~p

----------

wait, i just had an idea...

do you think if i make a disk image out of the most recent time machine backup i can use that to restore my hard drive from disk utility, all while running off of the external drive?

~p

 

[Weaselboy]

On your second idea. No that won't work. Time machine is not in a format that can be restored in that way.

The first method I described should get you back in business.