Restoring a home folder backed up using the Backup application (with the umbrella) to a new hard drive running Snow Leopard

Question

Restoring a home folder backed up using the Backup application (with the umbrella) to a new hard drive running Snow Leopard

I was running OS X 10.4 Tiger on a 2006 iMac. My home folder is backed up on a My Passport 500GB USB external drive using Backup (the original application that came pre-installed with the orange umbrella symbol).

I was intending to upgrade tp Snow Leopard so that I could sync a new iPad with iTunes and iPhoto so had ordered the disc from Apple and was waiting for it to arrive.

2 weeks ago my hard drive stopped - and I took the iMac to a support store (I am currently in Belgium and there is no Apple store here). They confirmed the hard drive was dead and as I had my receipt for Snow Leopard installed this for me.

Now I am trying to restore my home folder but the new OS does not recognise the data. I can see there is nearly 200GB of data on the external drive - but the folders contain small files call backup.log, backup.log.gz, InfoPlist.stringscat, stat0..... all under 5MB.

Applecare told me they did not know about the Backup application and it was not theirs..... then suggested I tried migration assistant.

With migration assistant, I just get a spinning wheel at the initial 'select your disk' page - spinning now for more than 8 hours. I checked on line and the only advice I saw was to use firewire - but my external drive works with the new high speed USB...

Can anyone help?

iMac (17-inch Early 2006), Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Nov 25, 2012 2:08 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Neville Hillyer

Level 4

1,879 points

Nov 25, 2012 9:03 AM in response to beachcomber45

Are there any restore instructions with the pre-installed software on the external drive?

Can you run the backup software to see if it has a restore option?

If these don't work then consult the drive manufacturer's web site and, if necessary, ask the drive manufacturer for help.

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Answer 2

Nov 25, 2012 10:34 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

Thank you for your help - I now have a solution ...in case it helps someone else.....

...I also think I may have been a bit silly...

The solution - thanks to a great guy in Apple Support USA - thank you Matt!!

first I partitioned my hard drive using disk utility - and set 235GB for a separate install - I called it Tiger install disk
this allows your hard drive to act as 2 totally separate systems (by holding down the option key when you start the computer you can choose which you want)
then I reinstalled Tiger from my original discs onto the new part of my hard drive
then I read my backed up home folder and copied it to the Tiger system on the new hard drive section
then I rebooted and started up Snow leopard on the original part of the hard drive
then I used migration assistant to transfer from the 'Tiger install disc' drive - it was recognised by migration assistant

Where I think I may have been a bit silly

I am now not sure if the orginal backup was always visible in Snow Leopard
in Tiger I found backup.sparseimage - which when double clicked opened up my home folder
now that I have istalled Tiger as well - I can also find this in now Leopard... ...so maybe I just hadn't opened all the original folders on my backup disk...
...but for sure migration assistant could not read the backup copy

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