03-05-2011, 04:47 AM

I had a drive fail recently and it was the 2nd hard drive in my system that was only for data. It was not the primary system drive. I have a 3rd hard drive in the system which is a Time Machine Backup drive and Time Machine backs up both of my first two hard drives.
I just got the hard drive replaced so have installed it in my system and formatted the drive with the same name as the original drive that failed.
Here is my problem:
I earlier posted about how to best do a restore and the main suggestion was to go into Disk Utility, click on the new drive that replaced the crashed drive, click the Reestore tab, and then go to destination and select the destination which I put as the drive that had failed but is now replaced, I then click on Image in the Source section and select my Time Machine drive, my backups file, and go to the most recent backup that contained this drive that failed. Yet I can select it or any of the files on the hard drive but the open option is greyed out on this screen. The cancel button is the only active button.
Is there something I am doing wrong? Is there another way to restore this drive?
Thank you for your help.

03-05-2011, 04:59 AM

To restore from a TM backup, you need to format the drive, boot from your OS X disc and start the installation. During the installation, you can select to restore from your TM backup.

Here is the Apple kb article to walk you through - link.

03-05-2011, 06:24 AM

Thank you for the above information. When I follow the steps it shows me the Time Machine drive which I select and then I have to choose where to restore the backup to and I choose the newly formatted replacement drive.
I haven't continued from that point since it says to select the disk where I want to restore my system. It doesn't appear to offer me an option of which disk to choose and the Time Machine backup has two drives on it, my main system drive and my second drive which is a data drive. The 2nd drive, the data drive, is the one I need to restore. Am I following the correct procedures or is there a way to choose to just restore this 2nd drive on the Time Machine backup instead of the main system drive?

03-05-2011, 07:19 AM

Originally Posted by markwco

Thank you for the above information. When I follow the steps it shows me the Time Machine drive which I select and then I have to choose where to restore the backup to and I choose the newly formatted replacement drive.

Ok, I follow you up to that point.

I haven't continued from that point since it says to select the disk where I want to restore my system.

Thought you just told me you did that above.

It doesn't appear to offer me an option of which disk to choose and the Time Machine backup has two drives on it,

Sorry, but I'm lost now. What do you mean your TM backup has two drives?

my main system drive and my second drive which is a data drive.

I would "assume" this is not the backup. Sounds like you're using two drives in your Mac and have it set up with your home folder on the 2nd drive? This is the drive that failed and you only need to restore your home folder, not the rest of the system? Your system drive is still functioning and bootable into OS X?

03-05-2011, 01:55 PM

I have two drives in my Mac. The main system drive which has my home folder, all software, etc. That is what I use most of the time but the 2nd drive is simply a data drive that I use for data such as video files I'm editing, etc. This 2nd drive is the one which failed and is the one I need to restore. I already have put in a new drive and formatted it but both drives were backed up to Time Machine. When I use Disk Utility within Mac OS X and go to that Restore drive, it shows both drives that I backed up including this 2nd drive but when I boot from OS X and try to restore, it just simply show my Time Machine drive and shows nothing more.