Restore to Snow Leopard from Lion Time Machine

Downgrade Lion to Snow Leopard

1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.

2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.

This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard. I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.1.

The simplest way is to install Snow Leopard. Go through the Setup Assistant and when given the opportunity to restore from another Mac, disk drive, or TM backup choose the appropriate option and restore your Home folder, applications and support files, and system preferences.

sToned aGain wrote:

. . .

My question is once I downgrade to SL ... will I be able to copy and paste the mails user library files from the TM backup into SL and have all my mails and folders there? Similarly for other programs like iPhoto etc.

You can selectively restore some files via the "Star Wars" display, but the Snow Leopard version of Mail (and perhaps other apps) won't work with the Lion folder/file structure and layout.

Kappy wrote:

The simplest way is to install Snow Leopard. Go through the Setup Assistant and when given the opportunity to restore from another Mac, disk drive, or TM backup choose the appropriate option and restore your Home folder, applications and support files, and system preferences.

Sorry, but that won't work. 😟 Neither Setup Assistant nor Migration Assistant will let you go "backwards" from Lion backups (whether Time Machine or a "clone"), or a Mac running Lion, to Snow Leopard.

It will for a Home folder, but not a full system restore. I'm referring to the former not the latter to be done AFTER reinstalling Snow Leopard.

Kappy wrote:

It will for a Home folder, but not a full system restore. I'm referring to the former not the latter to be done AFTER reinstalling Snow Leopard.

Have you actually done that with Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant? Every time I've tried it, the home folder shows as zero bytes and nothing is transferred.

Yes, but not from TM which, you know, I don't use. Works from a clone, however.

I can't imagine why it wouldn't since there's nothing unique about the Home folder, third-party applications, and support files on Lion versus Snow Leopard.

I can boot into Snow Leopard and point it to the Home folder on a Lion volume and vice-versa. All that changes are the configuration differences in System Preferences.

Surely, if you have a TM backup from your Snow Leopard system why would it not be usable once you have reinstalled Snow Leopard? Does Lion make older backups disappear? Or is this arising from doing completely new backups AFTER moving to Lion such that older Snow Leopard backups have been erased?

Kappy wrote:

Yes, but not from TM which, you know, I don't use. Works from a clone, however.

I don't think so. Migration Assistant on my Snow Leopard volume says this when I tell it to migrate from my Lion partition or Lion TM backups (I don't have a Lion clone at the moment):

I can't imagine why it wouldn't since there's nothing unique about the Home folder, third-party applications, and support files on Lion versus Snow Leopard.

There are some differences, notably Mail's folder/file layout. I've seen some posts that iCal won't work with Lion data, too, but haven't checked that out.

I can boot into Snow Leopard and point it to the Home folder on a Lion volume and vice-versa. All that changes are the configuration differences in System Preferences.

Yes, the Finder will let you do that, but neither Setup Assistant nor Migration Assistant will. Haven't for a long time, if ever.

Surely, if you have a TM backup from your Snow Leopard system why would it not be usable once you have reinstalled Snow Leopard?

It is usable. As I posted above, you can selectively restore things from the "Star Wars" display, but you can't use either Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant.

If I understand correctly, then, recovering to Snow Leopard would mean you have to have a separate Snow Leopard backup that was made before upgrading to Lion and doing a new backup?

You'd need Snow Lepard backups to do a full restore, but not necesarily separate ones.

You can do a full system restore from any backup you select (without erasing and installing OSX first), per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions, even if it's a different version of OSX. You see this window listing all the backups, their dates, and versions of OSX:

If there were Snow Leopard backups there, you'd just select the one you want.

But that's a full system restore, including OSX, not Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant, since neither of those allow you to select which backup you want.

If there are also Lion backups (on the same or a different volume), you can restore selected items via the "Star Wars" display as mentioned earlier.

I tried booting from my Snow Leopard system to see if Migration Assistant would stop restoring a Home folder from my Lion system. It did not. I received no alerts or dialogs stating I could not migrate my Home folder from Lion to the Snow Leopard system. Of course no TM is involved. So I'm puzzled why it prevented you from doing the same (assuming you try it from something other than a TM backup.)

That's exactly what I did; booted from Snow Leopard, started Migration Assistant and selected my Lion partition. I got the message on the Select Items to Migrate window. Never got as far as selecting which home folder, etc. Did it let you get to the window where you select user accounts, etc?

I get the same thing if I select a Time Machine drive with Lion backups. I don't currently have a Lion clone, so can't test that, but it should be the same as directly from the Lion partition.

I only have one user account. I got this window:

The hard drive has three partitions. Two of them have Lion clones. The third is a small Snow Leopard system.

I hate to suggest this, but are you sure that's the Snow Leopard version of Migration Assistant?

They're almost the same, but the buttons on Snow Leopard are rounded; the Lion ones are squared-off, and the Remaining space area is lighter on Lion:

Snow Leopard:

Lion: