Is Time Machine preventing me from Upgrading?

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Level 1

1 points

Is Time Machine preventing me from Upgrading?

I have an early 2008 imac 4g ram. I had upgraded to Mavericks and all was good till my hard drive failed. After getting the drive replaced I installed Snow Leopard from disc. During install it asked if I wanted to restore from time machine, ok yes. I chose all, including apps. After it was done I went to upgrade to Yosemite and no go, won't let me. So I clean reinstall again this time without restoring apps but everything else, same result. I then tried downloading Mavericks but also no luck, says can't install on this computer. Don't know what to do. Could install SL without restoring from time machine, but then what is the use of time machine? Also, can I restore from TM after install?

Posted on Dec 18, 2014 11:22 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 18, 2014 11:34 AM in response to guitarsam

Not sure why you can't install it, but TM has nothing to do with it.

But, why even start from SL if you have a good TM backup. Just boot from the recovery drive and restore the whole volume from the TM backup. Choose a date before the crash when all was working properly.

Then if you want to install Yosemite, you can try it then.

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Answer 2

guitarsam Author

Level 1

1 points

Dec 18, 2014 11:39 AM in response to Glenn Leblanc

Great. Thank you. I will give that a try.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,033 points

Dec 18, 2014 11:41 AM in response to guitarsam

Installer reports “This Disk Cannot Be Used to Start Your Computer

Can't Install OS on Volume Used by Time Machine

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Answer 4

guitarsam Author

Level 1

1 points

Dec 18, 2014 11:47 AM in response to guitarsam

Snow Leopard doesn't have a recovery mode. Came out with Lion.

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Answer 5

Dec 18, 2014 11:49 AM in response to guitarsam

BTW: Since your hard drive crashed, you may not have a recovery drive, but your TM drive will have a recovery drive built in. Just hold the Option key down when you start your computer. You will be able to select Time Machine to start from. Make sure your hard drive is Mac OS Extended Journaled. Restoring the whole volume will erase everything that's on the hard drive now. You can also choose to erase and reformat from Disk Utility in the Recovery Mode before restoring.

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