System REstore problem - please help

Question

Level 1

7 points

System REstore problem - please help

I will try and explain this in chunks:

I have had my iMac for about four days. During that time i set up time machine and and the system seemed to be backing up as expected. Today i did a restore to test it and make sure i understood the process. I seemed to have messed up.

I did what i thought was a system restore. However i now seem to only have 65GB of space left on my MAC HD, and the 250GB external Hard drive i was using seems to not be able to do back ups now.

When i set up time machine a couple of days ago the first major back up it did took up about 200GB. I think some how i have now got a complete copy on top of the original and i do not know what to do.

Thanks

Phil

iMac 21.5, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Jan 7, 2011 9:33 AM

Reply

Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,532 points

Jan 7, 2011 10:39 AM in response to PJGILL

Yikes you did mess up. I would suggest calling AppleCare (the number is in your manual) and letting them know what you did. I'm sure they can bail you out of this one, don't worry you're covered for 90 days of free AppleCare telephone support after buying a new Mac.

Reply

Answer 2

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jan 7, 2011 4:32 PM in response to PJGILL

PJGILL wrote:
I will try and explain this in chunks:

I have had my iMac for about four days. During that time i set up time machine and and the system seemed to be backing up as expected. Today i did a restore to test it and make sure i understood the process. I seemed to have messed up.

I did what i thought was a system restore. However i now seem to only have 65GB of space left on my MAC HD, and the 250GB external Hard drive i was using seems to not be able to do back ups now.

Just guessing, but did you select your internal HD in the "Star Wars" display and click Restore?

If so, that's not the way to do a full system restore. That's for selected items; and you can't restore OSX to the volume you're running from.

See #14 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum). for instructions on doing a full system restore.

Most likely, Time Machine put a whole copy of your internal HD in the (hidden) /Volumes folder. From a Finder window's menubar, select +Go > Go to Folder+ and type /Volumes in the prompt.

That should show an alias for each drive/partition connected to your Mac. If there's an actual folder there, named similar to your internal HD, delete it and empty the trash (that will take a long time).

You might want to review the [Time Machine Tutorial|http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics] and perhaps browse [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Reply