Restoring without Time Machine

You can try an archive & install. Even though it preserves your data, you should at least back up the data in your Home folder to some removable media.



-mj

Message was edited by: macjack

There are other tools you can use including other backup programs.

You can also use cloning programs, +Carbon Copy Cloner+ or SuperDuper, to duplicate your entire hard drive onto another hard drive or partition. The duplicates can be used to restore.

You can even use the Restore tab in Apple's Disk Utility to duplicate your drive to a disk image file or another drive/partition.

If you are short on backup space, you can manually backup just your +user folder+ to another location, or to optical disks. If you need to restore, first reinstall the OS and apps, then restore your user data.

(Or are you asking about restoring NOW without having used a backup process.)

twill11678 wrote:
The one thing I liked about Windows was being able to restore my computer to an earlier date and time. My Issue is with itunes and my iphone. I restored my iphone and synced it to another iphone by mistake and that last sync overrode (if thats a word) the previous sync. So I'm hoping I can restore my computer to the day before the sync...

you can do just that with TM system restore but you need the install DVD.

From Windows System Restore support page

System Restore takes a "snapshot" of critical system files and some program files and stores this information as restore points. You can use these restore points to return Windows XP to a previous state.

Windows's restore process does not restore user data to a previous state, just the system. Time machine can restore the entire drive or any specific file on the drive. So to recover from this type of problem in the future, you should start using Time Machine.