How do you restore system with TM?

A friend of mine has been having issues with his system. Upon starting up he is greeted with a large DO NOT ENTER sign and the computer just hangs. We managed to run a repair disk and get the system back but he's still having intermittent issues. I think it's related to his recent Norton AV program that he uninstalled and when he called Apple they agreed that NAV was the likely culprit. I've advised him to go AV free in the future.

So here's my question - He has a laptop and he has everything backed up to an external HD via Time Machine. So what do I need to know in order to format his HD and restore his files (movies/music/pictures) with the TM backups on the external?

The only thing that may be a factor is that the optical drive in his laptop no longer functions, but he does have an external CD drive.

My only other question is, how does Snow Leopard work in all of this. He has his original OS disk so should we start with that or clean install SL? Obviously, that's the better option if possible.

Any help is appreciated.

You can do a wipe and clean install. But try and see if that works through an external optical drive first

When snow leopard first starts after installation it will ask you what you want to do, one of the options will be to restore a previous set-up using a TM back-up

Norton AV and all the other Symantec software are widely considered to be the worst things you can put on your Mac. It'd be best to swear off them entirely once you sort this out.

The one problem that you may encounter in all this is the possibility that Time Machine backed up the NAV files into its backup as well. The only way to know whether it did would be to know whether Time machine was told to exclude System files during its setup.

Thanks. One other question, not entirely related. DO you need Time Machine to open/read/use a time machine drive? FOr example, if I wanted to drag all files from an external drive backed up with TM to another Mac is that possible?

Without using migration assistant or TM at all. Just a simple drag/drop?

Yes it is. TM backups are not encrypted nor password protected and are easily accessible from another machine. I have two machines here backing up via TM to the same drive/partition. I have no problem using Finder to open and browse the files inside either backup from either machine.

Bob's right as usual. You can restore Time Machine files using the Finder. It's one of the things I like about Time Machine as opposed to some other backup programs. I would bet though that there are some system files and applications which would not reinstall properly by drag and drop.

Slydude said:

... I would bet though that there are some system files and applications which would not reinstall properly by drag and drop.

Click to expand...

Yep, a lot of the applications that use installer packages rather than drag and drop will more than likely need to be re-installed from the package.

Your data will be fine. I always forget to mention apps since I always go out and download again to make sure I have the latest versions after a clean install.

Last week I used TM for the first time to restore a machine - I used Leopard not SL. I did find that once I formatted the HD using the Retail disk, one of the options where Disk Utility is on the title bar, I found Time Machine as an option and it did so flawlessly. It returned the HD intact but I noticed that the drive when returned was in the same shape as it was at the time of backup - in a state of needing to be de-fraged, which is why I formatted the HD. It appears to me that a full TM backup is an image of your existing disk and it did in fact return it that way.

That is a pretty good description of what Time Machine seems to be designed to do; return a drive to the condition it was in at the point of the last backup. I think, for defragging the drive, you have two options. No matter which one you choose make sure that your TM backup is current just in case anything goes wrong.

1. Clone the drive your drive to an external then boot from the external, format the internal drive then clone back to the internal. Try Carbon Copy Cloner, Super duper, or even Disk Utility.
2. Purchase a commercial defragmentation utility.

Chilbear said:

Last week I used TM for the first time to restore a machine - I used Leopard not SL. I did find that once I formatted the HD using the Retail disk, one of the options where Disk Utility is on the title bar, I found Time Machine as an option and it did so flawlessly. It returned the HD intact but I noticed that the drive when returned was in the same shape as it was at the time of backup - in a state of needing to be de-fraged, which is why I formatted the HD. It appears to me that a full TM backup is an image of your existing disk and it did in fact return it that way.

Click to expand...

I'm curious to know how you knew it needed to be defragged, and why you didn't just defrag it rather than wiping the drive? This seems like an awful lot of needless effort.

You are very correct. I started backing up for a reformat as the machine was giving me sleep/startup issues. Another forum has a techie who mentioned iDefrag as a system solution, so I downloaded and found out the current state of the drive. I "thought" a backup would be more than a clone of the drive hence I would have used one of the many backups that are way faster then TM. I did find out that iDefrag cannot do a "proper" job unless run from an external.

The theory was still sound as I was moving stuff from computer to computer as I was decommissioning a server and had many things going on at the same time. It all was annual maintenance and getting to know how TM and other programs work are valuable pieces to know.

I was planning to move to SL but chose not to until the machine is working correctly. I have a registered job ticket with Apple as the Aluminum iMac is not coming our of sleep correctly (have to hard restart) so I was being proactive by trying most of what the Support line would have suggested.

TM works as suggested is the bottom line but a well organized drive is just as important before doing backups.

I am always a little suspicious when someone recommends defragmentation to fix things like wake/sleep issues. First of all, fragmentation generally affects how quickly files can be read or written rather than the ability to read/write them. Secondly, for most users fragmentation only becomes an issue in very specific circumstances. I'll leave it to others to comment on the extent to which it affects servers.

May I suggest looking at the System logs in Console (in Applications/Utilities) to see if there are any clues. The logs are time stamped so look for entries that correspond to near the last time you experienced a problem.

Apple Support had me delete 2 cache folders and this has reduced the sleep issue but it has occurred once since. The defrag was a suggestion for performance primarily and it did help the machine greatly.

I did look at the logs and there was zero information which led me to think the HD was starting to fail hence my proactive attack on the system.

I noticed that you were planning to move to SL but waited because the system started acting wonky. I can't guarantee that an update would fix things but it sometimes has in the past for me. When Leopard was released I was experiencing bootup and "wake from sleep" issues. Upgrading from Tiger to Leopard fixed the problem.