You may have already heard about backing up your devices in order to safeguard your most precious data. If you're already using iCloud to sync your content, do you really need to do a full backup? One of the biggest reasons a full backup is so important is to cover you if or when your device crashes and you lose everything. If you're in the middle of a very important, time-sensitive project and your Mac poops out, you may have protected the document you're working on in iCloud, but without a backup, you didn't protect your apps or settings and it'll take you a really long time to get things back the way you want them. With a recent backup, you can just restore your Mac and continue working. Believe me, you'll be happier if you just back up your Mac.
How to restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup If you, you can restore individual files, or restore your entire hard drive from a recent backup. Note: Because you have to enter Recovery mode on your Mac, I suggest printing out these instructions or switching to another device to read them. Restart your Mac. While the startup disc is waking up, hold down the Command and R keys simultaneously. You're Mac will boot into macOS Utilities. If it doesn't, try again.
OS X 10.7 Lion did away with recovery disks, and these days, Apple provides a built-in recovery system within Yosemite.
Select Restore from Time Machine Backup from the list of available options. Click Continue. Click Continue on the Restore Your System Page. Select your Time Machine Backup. Click Continue. Select the most recent backup of your Mac's hard drive.
Click Continue. Your mac will restore the Time Machine backup and then restart once it is finished.
How to restore your Mac from a local backup If you using a cloning program like Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner, you can restore your entire hard drive from a backup, and even create a bootable installer. Note: Because you have to enter Recovery mode on your Mac, I suggest printing out these instructions or switching to another device to read them. Restart your Mac. While the startup disc is waking up, hold down the Command and R keys simultaneously.
You're Mac will boot into macOS Utilities. If it doesn't, try again.
Click on Disk Utility. Click Continue. Select your Mac's hard drive. Click the Restore tab at the top of the Disk Utility window. Select the external hard drive that your cloned backup is stored next to 'Restore From.' .
Select your Mac's hard drive next to 'Restore to.' . Click Restore. Your Mac will restore the cloned backup and then restart once it is finished. If you want to install a bootable backup, hold down the Option key while your Mac is restarting and select the clone from your external hard drive in your hard drive.
How to restore your Mac from a cloud backup If you use a, like Backblaze or CrashPlan, you can download missing data so you can restore you Mac. Each cloud-based backup service is different. All of them will require that you download a backup from their remote servers, though - unless the service offers to send you a physical hard drive that you can use as a backup (Backblaze offers this feature).
Most programs will have a Restore files tool right in the user interface. You can launch the remote app on your Mac, or visit the company's website. You can then select the files and folders you want to restore from your backup menu. Because you either have to download files from the Internet, or send away for a physical copy, I only recommend using a cloud-based backup service to restore your Mac if you don't already have a local backup on hand. It is very time consuming and less efficient than restoring directly from an external hard drive you have sitting right on your desk. Any questions? Do you have any questions about how to restore your Mac from a recent backup?
Put them in the comments and I'll help you out. Updated March 2018: I performed multiple restorations from various backups on my Mac running macOS High Sierra to confirm that APFS in High Sierra does not affect the process.
If there is data you wish to recover from the internal drive, you need to first install Lion on a blank external drive following the same instructions below, then holding option key to boot off the external drive, recover/copy your files off the internal drive before erasing the internal drive and reinstalling Lion on the internal drive. When your done with the external drive, disconnect it and all other unecessary drives to prevent accidental deletion of data. Installing Lion on either internal or external drive is as follows: Insert the Lion USB thumb drive. Reboot the computer holding the option key down, select the Lion USB installer When a choice of Disk Utility appears, choose it and choose your internal drive 750GB Toshiba media Security Option Zero All Data and click Erase, and wait. When finished, click the Partition Tab, 1 partition, Option GUID, Format: OS X Extended (Journaled) give it a name and click Apply. Quit Disk Utility. Install Lion from the installer screen.
Reboot and go through setup. If you have files on backup on a regular storage drive from the previous system, then make sure to setup with the same user name as before. Of If you have a clean, uncorrupted TimeMachine or clone, then use SetupAssistant (when you first rebootit will ask) to migrate that user to the new machine. If all possible, install as many programs as you can first BEFORE restoring your data from backup (hard drives only) as this makes programs perfrom better.
If there is data you wish to recover from the internal drive, you need to first install Lion on a blank external drive following the same instructions below, then holding option key to boot off the external drive, recover/copy your files off the internal drive before erasing the internal drive and reinstalling Lion on the internal drive. When your done with the external drive, disconnect it and all other unecessary drives to prevent accidental deletion of data. Installing Lion on either internal or external drive is as follows: Insert the Lion USB thumb drive. Reboot the computer holding the option key down, select the Lion USB installer When a choice of Disk Utility appears, choose it and choose your internal drive 750GB Toshiba media Security Option Zero All Data and click Erase, and wait. When finished, click the Partition Tab, 1 partition, Option GUID, Format: OS X Extended (Journaled) give it a name and click Apply. Quit Disk Utility.
Install Lion from the installer screen. Reboot and go through setup. If you have files on backup on a regular storage drive from the previous system, then make sure to setup with the same user name as before.
Of If you have a clean, uncorrupted TimeMachine or clone, then use SetupAssistant (when you first rebootit will ask) to migrate that user to the new machine. If all possible, install as many programs as you can first BEFORE restoring your data from backup (hard drives only) as this makes programs perfrom better. Jorgefromupland wrote: So under disk utility I have 500.11 GB ST9500325AGS Media and below that there is another one list and indented with the name: Macintosh HD.
So, the one I will erase and format is the 500.11GB one, correct? What would happen if had erased and reformatted the Macintosh HD instead of the 500.11 GB?? To be honest, I've never tried it. The first one is the entire HD, which encompasses the total capacity. Mac HD is just one volume on the HD. If you look in DU, you'll see that Mac HD lists 'capacity' (not total capacity), which is less than the capacity of the entire HD; there are instructions on this part of the HD which have to do with how the volume (and potentially additional partitions/volumes) is treated.
Thank you all for all you help and support in this matter!!!!!!! I now feel confident in restoring my MacBook Pro back to the original factory setting. Thank You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You are quite welcome for whatever help I was able to offer. Good luck to you. Jorgefromupland wrote: So under disk utility I have 500.11 GB ST9500325AGS Media and below that there is another one list and indented with the name: Macintosh HD.
So, the one I will erase and format is the 500.11GB one, correct? MacIntosh HD is your OS X Partition only, not including your hidden EFI or Lion Recovery Partition (if you had Lion previously installed) jorgefromupland wrote: What would happen if had erased and reformatted the Macintosh HD instead of the 500.11 GB?? You would only erase your OS X partition. I don't know what the exact reason is your erasing and reinstalling a factory Lion machine from the Lion USB, you could have reinstalled Lion from the Lion Recovery Partition (hold command r boot) but that needs a AppleID and perhaps you don't want that association in the firmware, or your Internet connection isn't good enough to download and install Lion from Apple's servers. So I'm advising you to erase the entire drive, including the hidden EFI firmware partition (and Lion Recovery Partition) by selecting the 500.11 GB instead, the results will be the same. The Lion installer will simply reinstall the Lion Recovery Partition and EFI partition with no user identification.
The Zero Erase will 'scrub' the drive of any previous data, also map off any bad sectors that are on the drive, improving reliability. Also you didn't exactly mention the OS X version on your machine, if it was Snow Leopard or earlier with or without Bootcamp or other partitions, the entire drive still would have required being reformatted to update the GUID Partiton map to the newer version. So I was erring on the side of making sure it worked. Ditto with the Zero Erase, even though it takes a bit longer as it checks the drive, to ensure your bad sectors are mapped off ahead of time. Thank you for the information, I presently have a newer MacBook Pro with Lion 10.7.2 (with all the most recent update’s) preinstalled it. The disappointing thing about this is that it didn’t come with any restore software separately, other than preloaded on the hard drive. So, I ordered a Lion thumb drive from Apple and of course all that came in the package was the USB drive, no documentation as how to restore the MacBook Pro to original factory settings.
![System restore for macbook pro System restore for macbook pro](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125457849/844573162.jpg)
Here goes another question, by restoring my mac back to factory setting would I be destroying the ability to restore my future possibility from the Internet recovery option? Thank you in advance. Jorgefromupland wrote: Thank you for the information, I presently have a newer MacBook Pro with Lion 10.7.2 (with all the most recent update’s) preinstalled it. The disappointing thing about this is that it didn’t come with any restore software separately, other than preloaded on the hard drive.
So, I ordered a Lion thumb drive from Apple and of course all that came in the package was the USB drive, no documentation as how to restore the MacBook Pro to original factory settings. It's loaded into the ROMs now, if you stick a new drive in, it kicks in automatically, else you hold command r keys and boot into Lion Recovery Partition and download it that way. Jorgefromupland wrote: by restoring my mac back to factory setting would I be destroying the ability to restore my future possibility from the Internet recovery option? No, it's built into the ROMS as a last resort. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums.
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