Configuring Time machine to Restore after a failer

PureHeartKnight wrote:
Hi

how to Configurr Time machine to Restore after a failer ?

Do you mean you want to recover your entire system from your TM backups? If so, see item 14 in +Frequently Asked Questions+ at the top of this forum for details.

Or do you mean, once your Mac is recovered, how to start new TM backups?

When you first boot after restoring, you may want to immediately turn Time Machine off, as it's next backup will probably be a full one -- everything it just restored will be backed-up again. You cannot prevent this, only delay it. It will of course take quite a while, and a lot of space on your TM disk, so you may wish to wait until you're sure your system is the way you want it, or even erase your TM disk with Disk Utility and let your backups start anew.

what if there is another backups for another Mac's ?

That may become a problem. TM knows which backups are for which Mac, and will not mix them. But if there's not room for the first backup of the restored Mac (see above), you have two bad choices: erase the disk, and start both Macs over again with TM; or delete all the backups for the failed Mac via the TM interface (see item 12 of the same article).

If you decide to erase the disk completely, you may want to partition it before beginning backups, so each Mac's backups have their own, exclusive partition, to prevent this hassle in the future. See item 5 for instructions if you want to do this.

How would you restore to a state prior to a bad install/change? I understand how to do a file restore. but what if you installed a program & started having problems. then you want to uninstall & get all your settings back to the state before the install? in the PC world, you would uninstall the software and then use a "restore point" prior to te install.
how would you do this with Time Machine?

thanks!!
chris

BusyChris18 wrote:
How would you restore to a state prior to a bad install/change? I understand how to do a file restore. but what if you installed a program & started having problems. then you want to uninstall & get all your settings back to the state before the install? in the PC world, you would uninstall the software and then use a "restore point" prior to te install.
how would you do this with Time Machine?

You have two choices:

1. Uninstall the app. If it came with an uninstaller, use that to get all it's related files. If you deleted the uninstaller, download the app again to get the uninstaller and use it. If there is no uninstaller, just delete it and look for it's associated files, usually in <your home folder>/Library/Application Support. There are some 3rd-party apps that can help with this, such as AppZapper, available from VersionTracker.com or MacUpdate.com.

In almost all cases, that's the quickest, easiest, most reliable method.

2. Do a complete system restore, as referenced in the post above, but select a prior backup.

In nearly all cases, this is vast overkill. There's rarely a reason to do it.