Currently going through my first "Restore from Time Machine"

[Cassady]

Hello all,

Not wanting to jinx anything, but took the plunge on a full-restore from my time-machine this evening - and so far, all has been as expected. Even restored my desktop pictures. Everything appears to be accounted for - I was seriously nervous, given my past experiences with anything restore-related in Windows, but have been pleasantly surprised at how easy this has been.

I am thanking all that is beautiful that I listened to that little voice that had me do a backup yesterday afternoon, before attempting my "system re-design"... Moral of the story - if you're unsure about what that oddly named folder does, and where it came from - assume it was put there by the system. And the system will not like it if it cannot find that self-same folder, because you decided to move it for aesthetic purposes!

 

[Cassady]

Only snag I have hit, is the time machine back-up, after the fact - i.e., all has been properly restored, and I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to make a back-up of my system.

I've started it three times already, before 'stopping' the back-up - since whereas the clock/watch item remains rotating, under time-machine preferences, the back-up remains stuck at about 20mb's in, and won't move...

Should I simply be patient and let it run - or could there be some other issue? I'm thinking the first back-up after the restore might take a bit longer, but have googled and cannot find any reference to this...

Would appreciate some feedback from anything who has recently gone through a Restore.

 

[Cassady]

At risk of having a conversation with myself - googled properly, and found confirmation: the first back-up after a System Restore is a full back-up, and can therefore quite easily work at a speed only slightly slower than photosynthesis...

Joy.

 

[GreGorGy]

Only snag I have hit, is the time machine back-up, after the fact - i.e., all has been properly restored, and I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to make a back-up of my system.

I've started it three times already, before 'stopping' the back-up - since whereas the clock/watch item remains rotating, under time-machine preferences, the back-up remains stuck at about 20mb's in, and won't move...

Should I simply be patient and let it run - or could there be some other issue? I'm thinking the first back-up after the restore might take a bit longer, but have googled and cannot find any reference to this...

Would appreciate some feedback from anything who has recently gone through a Restore.

Be patient - it will be like a first time backup and it needs to go through all sorts of stuff. It is a known thing. Can't find links to it right now but I do recall a similar issue a while back. Take an hour or two to chill and ride a horse or something. Oh, wait, its friday - make it a white horse. or J&B.

 

[vinodh]

Boot up from a USB installer or DVD. It can be Lion or Mountain Lion. Open Disk Utility and repair file permissions on the drive. Time Machine can sometimes get stuck like that when it encounters errors in the file system. It could be cross linked files or issues with a file that is in the Trash but is not really deleted etc. I had this happen twice so far and fixing the permissions solved it for me.

 

[Cassady]

Thanks for all suggestions!

After about 3 hours of it being stuck on 7gb, I was ready to pull the plug. Did one more round of google searches, just to be sure I had'nt missed anything - be patient; be very patient - and lo & behold, when I popped back to preferences to stop the backup (since I'd given up on being patient) - it was moving again...

Got to 12gbs relatively quickly, and then suddenly - it finished off.
Then it started "cleaning up". Been doing that since then - but this time I will try my damnedest to wait it out...

What is a bit odd, is the 12,4gb total. I'm pretty sure it used to be more than that... I have about 280gb's in total on my disk... Maybe I'm imagining things - but seem to remember my earlier back-ups taking up more space... So I definitely want to wait this one out, and first verify that all is ok on the Starwars screen...

If not - will try your trick vinodh - before trying a complete reformat as a last resort, if that doesn't work...

The only MAJOR kill-joy, is that I was planning on slipping out early this afternoon... Now I have to wait for this whole process to finish, since I cannot close the lid... EPIC joy.

Or go ride that horse...

 

[SauRoNZA]

Watching Backups finish is always going to take a long time.

Just leave it and let it run overnight and it will be done by morning.

The more you try and "work" on the machine the longer it will take.

 

[bwana]

I prefer restoring from a superduper cloned drive. Time machine is just too much effort for too little reward. I have no interest in previous versions of documents.

 

[Cassady]

Thanks all.... Sorted in the end. Amazing what some patience can do

Moral of the story - after a system restore, expect the mother of all backups the very first time you relaunch time machine thereafter!

 

[bwana]

Why did you do it in the first place?

 

[GreGorGy]

Why did you do it in the first place?

Cos the system was fried:

before attempting my "system re-design"... Moral of the story - if you're unsure about what that oddly named folder does, and where it came from - assume it was put there by the system. And the system will not like it if it cannot find that self-same folder, because you decided to move it for aesthetic purposes!

 

[Cassady]

Cos the system was fried:

I tried a complete overall of my My Documents folder, in order to align things for Hazel. But I also made the mistake of shifting around those folders I should have left alone...

All appeared to be ok, until firing up Excel gave me the beach-ball of death, as did Word - mainly because I dared to move the "Microsoft User Data" folder [clearly wasn't thinking ].... The "My Data Sources" was what stuffed up Mail, I think - as in - completely wiped it - asked me to enter my details as if opening it for the first time... And Parallels doesn't like its link being moved around either...

So I figured rather than spend the day sorting all of this out - let me try out time-machine instead, since if it works, would probably be safer in the long-run... and time spent waiting aside, it worked perfectly...

Still going to do that My Documents shake-up, but will be sure to back-up first again - and will make the changes one sub-folder lower, thereby leaving all the above exactly where they are... That should ensure there is no repeat of the fun and games...

 

[DuckieZA]

Ah yes, that lovely Microsoft User Data folder. Best not to mess with that. In the usual Microsoft style, they did their own thing seemingly without reference to the way Apple does things and it's a nightmare if you touch it.

Same thing if you use utilities to remove other languages from the Office files to slim them down, it used to (might still) just break.

Best leave things be, as and where where MS puts them.