Lion to Snow Leopard via Time Machine

Not if you've been backing up in Time Machine with Lion. The best way to do this is to make a complete clone of your Snow Leopard to an external hard disk, then you can restore by cloning it back to the internal disk. Or even better, install Lion on the external hard disk, boot from that, see if you like it and if you do, install again on the internal hard disk. If you don't, you don't have to recover anything.

Yes, just boot from your 10.6 install dvd/usb stick and select restore from time machine from the top menu. Make sure time machine is up to date before installing Lion.

Do take care that your current time machine backup doesn't get destroyed by Lion time machine.

To be on the save side, I would not use your current time machine backup drive for your new Lion installation until you're sure you want to stick with the new cat.

I did it and it worked fine. When you boot from your install disc, and get to the restore from Time Machine part, you can see in the list of past backups which are Snow Leopard and which are Lion.

As I remember it, when I updated to Lion, Time Machine did a bigger than normal backup, but just another backup. When you restore from Lion to Snow Leopard, Time Machine will want to do a whole new complete backup, as it cannot down grade the last backup with Lion components in it. If you have lots of stuff like I did, about 600gig on a 1000gig drive, the newly restored Snow Leopard will not have enough room to do a whole new backup. This means that if you have files in Lion that you need to transfer back, you need to get those first. I then reformated the drive and set Time Machine backup up again.

Of course being able to restore will also depend on how many backups your backup drive can handle. If you stay in Lion too long, you will loose all your old Snow Leopard backups gradually, which will slowly be dropped off as the new Lion ones are added.

Hope this helps.

Sorry, folks, but these instructions are sheer madness. Who would want to risk losing all their data and applications through a mistake, just to return to a product that gave satisfaction that is lacking in the "upgrade"? You can't possibly be serious about wiping all data from your drive to do this. Also, how many people have a second external drive in addition to the one they use for Time Machine? Only major geeks.

Apple has made it functionally impossible to return to Snow Leopard for the rest of us. I'm going to try to get a genius appointment and let them do it for me.

b1j wrote

Sorry, folks, but these instructions are sheer madness. Who would want to risk losing all their data ..

I can assure you that your fears are baseless and I would suggest due to a lack of experience. It is quite a simple and safe operation to return to SL using a Time Machine backup. In any operation there is a possibility that something could go wrong, but you might get killed crossing the road to your car any day too, but that doesn't stop you from going out the front door each day. In each case the risk is small, and while you still have your Time Machine backup, then nothing is lost. It is designed to be used to reinstall the system from.

Apple has made it functionally impossible to return to Snow Leopard for the rest of us.

Not really. As I said before, it is quite simple, and most people could manage, but it is also not for those who know absolutely nothing about doing anything technical on a computer.

I respect your point of you, which is correct for you, and by the sounds of it you should get someone else to do it for you, but I suggest in future you don't comment on matters that you don't really know anything about.

Hi Parna. You are correct, I do not know how to revert to the earlier version. That is why I got onto this post and similar threads, looking for instructions. What I found was offputting. A few people were giving kindly, detailed step-by-step instructions that involved wiping your hard drive and possibly losing your data. Athough they meant well and were trying to help, it sounded complicated and risky, and not something I wanted to undertake. My comments were a response to the information I found in posts like these.

I would encourage you to reserve criticism to what you know, as well. Please don't assume I "know absolutely nothing about doing anything technical on a computer". I've been using PCs and Macs since 1980, and I've managed quite well.

But when a user experience abruptly falls short of informed expectations (battery life, excessive heat, multiple crashes for the first time), a user wants to change that experience. If it's necessary to be a programmer to do that, then the brand experience is degraded. You and I will both agree to that, right? Who is Apple making computers for?

This time, they rushed Lion out for reasons relating to their other product cycles, and took away value from current users. That's the injury. But the insult is what I'm responding to: that the fix to revert to Snow Leopard takes an expert lke yourself. Can you feel a bit of empathy yet?

Hi B1j

If it's necessary to be a programmer to do that, then the brand experience is degraded. You and I will both agree to that, right?

No, sorry I cannot agree on that. I can assure you that it is really really simple. The brand experience is not degraded. If I was there by your side, and guided you through it the first time, you would be amazed at how easy the process is.

Yes the process does wipe your drive, but you have a whole series of backups in TIme Machine, right? All your data is still there, untouched, so nothing is lost. Even if the process of reinstalling Snow Leopard was to go wrong, nothing is lost because you still have your TM backup and it is always there to try again.

However the chances of it going wrong are very small. I used to be a computer technician, I have done these type of things many times, they rarely go wrong, but you always need a backup just in case the rare occurence does happen.

However I am not encouraging you to try. You are obviously not comfortable with it, so don't.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

The thing is, my last backup was before I installed Lion, and I have edited several files since then. I'm antsy about using Time Machine with Lion because it appears from some of these threads that I will lose the ability to return to Snow Leopard if I do.

I'll probably go to a genius appointment.

All the best,

LION is destroying my Time Machine.

I had three puters swiped from my residence the other day. I bought a new macBook Pro. I tried to use my Time Machine backup to repopulate the new purchace, I was using 10.7.1 on the old boxes.

So far after three days and a swaped out MacBook Pro, it looks like my Time machine disk is corrupted.

Wery unhappy here,

RAW

I also tried this after reading this thread and i was able to restore on Snow Leopard from a Lion time machine backup. it's nice when your browser shows up w/ the exact tabs you left off at ^_^

So can I or can't I revert to Snow Leapord off of a Lion time machine.

I only have lion Time Machines available and I HATE it.

I desperately want to revert. I've wiped the computer and put Snow Leapord on, but now I can't migratge off the Lion back up. It looks like I can copy files individually, Will this work with all APPs? Is this what I'll have to do.

If there is anyway to make have the computer automatically migrate the files from a Lion Time Machine to a Snow Leapord Machine please give me clear instructions of how you do/did this.

Thank you.