Restoring Mac using time machine backup

One of the reason why I upgraded from OS Tiger to OS Leopard was time machine.  I loved the way it backed up the system behind the scene .  Time machine had rescued me couple of times before when I had accidently deleted couple of my folders that contained very important documents. Time Machine is one of the great features of  Leopard. Its ability to display the backup with time factor and be able to pick the version of the file from different backups is simply outstanding. I wish there was something like this for Linux and Windows.  Even though I have used Time Machine to restore files and folders before, I never had a chance to test its full potential. Restoring the entire hard drive was the eternal test. So I decided to chose that and check what Time Machine got . Result : It works great ! 

It simply worked. Not big deal at all. Just had to follow the steps from the window and viola !  Just to make it easy for others and myself , I thought I will post it.

Restore Procedure :

Restoring the entire disk requires the Leopard Install Disk.  Basically the process, is start the installer, instead of installing the OS, I chose the Restore System from Backup and followed the steps and off it went and restored.  Here are the process in detail :

 Insert the OS X (Leopard) dvd disc and reboot the macbook. Press the key C while rebooting to reboot it from the dvd.

 When the install screen comes up, from the menu bar select Utlities > Restore System from Backup

 This brings up the Restore Your System options, select continue :

It will scan and find the Time Machine source drives that I can use,  select the backup source and hit continue :

Now it will scan the time machine volume and show you all the snapshots / backups that you can restore from. Choose the version of snapshot you want and hit continue

Leopard now will verify all your disks on your system and whether you have enough space and integrity of the backup :

 

 

Now select the volume you want the backup to restore to and click restore  and off it goes..

 

And now you wait.. It seems to be reading the time machine back up drive in chunks and restoring it them. I think instead of restoring bit by bit, it does it by blocks. But I pretty much just kept watching .

 

Wait for the restore to fully complete  until it pops a screen to restart the machine.  Once you choose the restart the system will restart from your regular startup disk.  It was a very seamless process. Now beat that Windows !!   All my iTunes , iPhotos, iCal and Contacts library were intact.  When I started up the mail, it imported all the emails from the archive file and was up and running. Spotlight automatically started rebuilding the index too.  

Result :   Time machine is just amazing.