Full Time Machine 10.6.3 restore from WD MyBookLive - not recognising the backup

Question

Full Time Machine 10.6.3 restore from WD MyBookLive - not recognising the backup

My iMAC 2007 WD 500GB disk died, but luckily I've been using Time Machine backing up to my NAS WD MyBookLive device, ever since upgrading to OS X Snow Leopard.

I managed to get the new WD 1TB disk installed ok and I can boot from My Snow Leopard Retail CD (hold C on boot), and did a journal format on the empty 1TB disk, so far so good.

I go to Disk Utilities - Restore System from Backup, and it finds my "TimeMachine" on network "MyBookLive"

The forums helped me get over the next problem where I did not set the admin password on the WD MyBookLive device, but once I did that, I was able to connect to the remote disk, and the name of my Mac Time Machine appears ok.

But when I select it and hit continue - the next screen that opens asks me to "Select the Time Machine backup I want to restore. Only complete backups of Mac OS X appear in the list" - but the list is empty, "no backups were found"

When I login to the WD NAS via a browser I can see the Time Machine backup archive/file approx 320G in size. This would have equated to everything that was on my original HD before it died.

Is there anything I could have missed out?

As an alternative approach, if I go ahead with a manual install of OS Snow Leopard from my retail CD, will I be able to boot from my HD and then do a full Time Machine restore?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.3), Time Machine full system restore

Posted on Feb 25, 2014 9:53 AM

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Answer 1

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edfromdublin20 Author

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Feb 26, 2014 4:13 AM in response to edfromdublin20

Just thought I'd post this result, it might save someone else some work. This approach worked for me, all data now restored (user accounts, apps etc).

1. Install new WD10EZEX 1TB disk in iMAC 2007

2. Insert OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3 retail CD and start iMAC, press "C" to boot from CD

3. In Disk Utilities, select the new HD and journal format, proceed to install OS X 10.6.3 from CD to the new HD

4. iMAX reboots to complete the install, and then prompts for first time setup (country, keyboard layout).

5. Choose the option to take the Time Machine Backup to migrate/create all old user accounts, apps, data. iMAC finds my Time Machine Backup drive and files on the LAN and starts the restore of the data - took about 6 hours.

6. When complete, reboot, checked admin login and all accounts were ok, then started Software Update. My iMAC was running 10.6.8 before the original HD died, but once the updates were complete I was able to access all apps, data etc.

Lessons learned:

1. Always backup with Time Machine

2. Keep your original install disks/retail OS X disks handy

3. Set a non-default admin password on WD MyBookLive NAS

I'm going to give myself 10 points for solving the problem, but thanks to all the others who post solutions on this forum as I was able to get what I needed.

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