Restoring with Time machine under Lion

[andymac2210]

I've only used macs for about 4 months now, but I have used time machine (I used it early on, just to check how well it worked before loading my computer with important stuff).
The thing is, when you do a 'restore' with time machine, it's my understanding that you need to original system disks that come with the computer to do a complete system restore of the OS.

With Lion being an App store only download, how will this effect someone who wishes to completely restore their system or transfer it to another mac via migration assistant?

So if I install Lion, few months down the line my computer gets stolen/lost/broken and I buy a new mac and want to set it up with my external HDD time machine backup, will the process be as simple as just plugging it in and restoring?

 

[vmachiel]

I think you're supposed to use a snow leopard dvd to mediate between the fresh hard drive and the time machine backup.

to the rest of the forum: Right?

 

[maflynn]

If the rediscovery partition is not there (new hard drive) or corrupted, then yeah the only recourse is to boot off the Snow Leopard discs and then do a system restore from time machine.

 

[andymac2210]

If the rediscovery partition is not there (new hard drive) or corrupted, then yeah the only recourse is to boot off the Snow Leopard discs and then do a system restore from time machine.

So based on this can we assume all new macs will be shipping with a snow leopard DVD?
Or how are we going to do system restores...

 

[vmachiel]

If have no idea. Someone send an email to steve jobs about this and his reply was simply: use the snow leopard dvd. But no word on delivery of the dvd

 

[baryon]

You can use the Recovery Partition. When you boot from that, you can erase your disk and/or restore from Time Machine, or even reinstall Lion via download. This method is official and perfect unless you want to buy a new hard drive because the old one is either too small or failed.

You can always make a bootable Lion install DVD or USB drive by using the "View Package Contents" method and Disk Utility. You probably know about that, if not, search for it. This method will work no matter what, even if you have a completely blank, unpartitioned drive without the recovery partition (the only reason you would use this method is a failed hard drive or a new hard drive for any other reason).

 

[Steve's Barber]

I was curious about this as well so I played with it for just a few minutes.

While I did not try to migrate all my files over to Lion... Lion's time machine app did recognize my SL time machine drive. For what it's worth, you're at least able to restore files/folders from SL to Lion through Lion. (If this makes sense). I was only able to go to the most recent backup though.

The above is what I want to do anyway as I'll clean install Lion when I get it.

 

[andymac2210]

Anyone else got any input here?

The totally new OS is going to making something vital like a system restore quite confusing for end users, I'm confused and I work with computers for a living.

Be nice to know how this is going to work without the physical disk you'd normally insert when doing a time machine restore.

 

[baryon]

You don't need a Snow Leopard disk to restore from Time Machine. You just need any disk that can boot into a the Time Machine restore utility or whatever it's called. That can be a Leopard disk, a Snow Leopard disk, or a Lion disk that you made, but more likely it will be your restore partition that Lion will have created.

Maybe the new Macs will come with a USB drive (like the current MacBook Airs) that will contain the Lion recovery partition.

 

[alexandero]

As it seems the problem is that the format of the Time Machine file system has changed slightly from SL to Lion. And while Lion can obviously read a Time Machine backup from SL, no one knows how troublesome it will be to access a Lion Time Machine backup after having booted from Leopard install DVDs.

This makes me assume that you'll first need to restore SL, then update to Lion by redownloading from the app store, and only after having upgraded to Lion you can restore your backup from Time Machine.

 

[andymac2210]

This makes me assume that you'll first need to restore SL, then update to Lion by redownloading from the app store, and only after having upgraded to Lion you can restore your backup from Time Machine.

Yeah sort of what I was thinking, seems totally ridiculous considering how simple a restore is right now.

It's almost stupid enough that I probably won't even 'upgrade' to Lion unless we can get definitive answers on how to restore our systems, which to me is one of the most important functions and one I need to work without any problems.

 

[Dutchme]

OK so these last comments sum up exactly where I am. I had a hard disk failure and a new one installed. I installed the Snow Leopard disk and booted from time machine back ups. All my files and folders are back but I can not use certain applications as Lion has not been re-installed.

The irony is, even though Snow leopard 10.6.8 is installed I can not open the app store or any of the standard Mac applications (iMovie, Pages, iPhoto, as well as Mission Control, and Launchpad) so I can not download Lion. I get the message:

You can't use this version of the application App Store with this version of Mac*OS*X.
You have Mac*OS*X 10.6.8. The application requires Mac*OS*X 10.7 or later.

I am going to do what has been suggested and start again, install Snow Leopard, download Lion from the App store and try a time machine backup again.

I have been happy with my mac as things just work, this certainly does not!

 

[Jagardn]

My thought on the recovery functionality was for Apple to put a 2GB flash chip on the Logic Board dedicated as a recovery disk. Changing HDD's wouldn't be effected because its not on the physical disk that is being swapped. This doesn't help current users, but would be great for future hardware revisions.