Just had my HD replaced. Want to recover from Time Capsule. Should I be able to select Time Capsule drive on boot?

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Just had my HD replaced. Want to recover from Time Capsule. Should I be able to select Time Capsule drive on boot?

Prior to replacing the HD, I was able to hold the option key while powering on and it would prompt me for startup device. HD was formatted, but no OS install (thought I could just do Time Machine recovery). Connected to Time Capsule again (via Ethernet port) and option/power-on just sits there. Then tried PRam reset, and afterward, same behavior. Should this have worked?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Feb 16, 2014 3:20 PM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,624 points

Feb 16, 2014 3:53 PM in response to Ken Nichols

Connect the Time Capsule to the machine via Ethernet, DO NOT attempt to restore wirelessly, it could take a week or more.

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Answer 2

Feb 16, 2014 3:57 PM in response to Ken Nichols

Your profile says OS 10.5.8. Is that correct? Do you have the disk?

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Answer 3

Ken Nichols Author

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Feb 16, 2014 5:05 PM in response to Eustace Mendis

Actually, before my original HD failed, I was running 10.8.5

The iMac is from December 2007, soni had to get the HD replaced by a 3rd party (apple authorized )

Tried connecting to 2 separate Ethernet ports in Time Capsule, same results when I hold down the option key and power on (never get prompted to select startup drive). I do still have an 0SX Tiger CD though

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Answer 4

Feb 16, 2014 5:38 PM in response to Ken Nichols

To the best of my knowledge you cannot, never could, boot from Time Capsule. You need to boot the computer first from another device, then restore from TC.

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Answer 5

Feb 16, 2014 6:15 PM in response to Eustace Mendis

Read this if you need to boot from Time Machine backup...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

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Answer 6

Ken Nichols Author

Level 1

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Mar 9, 2014 7:54 AM in response to Eustace Mendis

Sorry for the delayed response. This indeed seemed to be the case: I connected my wife's MacBook to my iMac via firewire, connected my iMac to the Time Capsule via ethernet, held the option key while powering on, and was then able to restore via Time Capsule (hooray!). Interestingly, I first attempted to restore with the latest backup, which was from about 20 hours *after* I discovered that the iMac was displaying symptoms of HD corruption. At the end of restoration, the iMac would not reboot. I then restored again with a version of the backup from just before the last time I used the iMac with no problem and everything worked fine. I'm guessing that this means the time capsule backup actually stored a corrupted write at some point. I haven't done anything about it yet, but I'm wondering whether I should now create a fresh full backup. Thanks for the advice!

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