How long time machine restore

But how do you restore data from Time Machine backups when you need to? Here's a rundown of all these methods, including what to do if your Mac spends a long time searching for Time Machine backups. Most of the time, you only need to restore a single file from Time Machine. Perhaps you deleted your Time Machine backup by mistake, or need to revert a document to the way it was two weeks ago.

If you use Time Machine to create regular backups , you can fix both of these problems using the Time Machine app. Open the document you want to restore, or go to the location where you deleted it in Finder. Then open Time Machine from the Applications folder, using Spotlight to search for it, or by selecting Enter Time Machine from the menu bar. When you open Time Machine, it shows all the previous versions of your active document.

Go back in time using the up and down arrows, or by selecting a date from the right side of the screen. Choose the file you want to restore and press Space to preview it. When you're certain it's the correct version, click Restore to bring the file back into your current version of macOS.

When necessary, you can restore every file, user account, and setting on your Mac from a previous Time Machine backup. This is useful if something goes wrong in macOS that you don't know how to fix, or if you want to move all your data to a new Mac. This is a hidden partition that you can use to:.

Obviously, we're interested in the forth option here. Before we can use it, we need to boot into macOS Recovery. Keep holding both keys until you see a startup screen, which should be followed by the macOS Utilities window. A spinning globe should appear while your Mac downloads macOS Recovery from the web. Shut down your Mac, then hold Option while it turns on. A restore will take different amounts of time depending on your machine: the amount of data backed up everything covered by your usual time machine backup , the speed of your connection to your Time Machine disk, and the speed of your iMac's internal disk.

If it is on a network Time Capsule then connecting by Ethernet cable is better than connecting via WiFi. The recovery mode process will take a long time to read all the data which it will try to restore, and this can make predictions about duration which are wildly inaccurate.

My last restore predicted about 20 hours for about GB to restore to a standard hard disk , and I was surprised when it later changed its mind and predicted completion in a couple of hours. Try verifying the Time Machine backup from another computer alt-click the time machine icon in the menu bar. Jan 10, AM. Page content loaded. Question: Q: How long does a Time Machine restore take?

Once you have the OS installed, you will be using the Migration Assistant application which will extract data from your Time Machine backups. Use the following steps to restore your Mac from Time Machine. Time Machine is a great tool for recovering deleted files and folders. The catch is that you need to have backed up your data using Time Machine for it to be useful. Unfortunately, you might not always have made a backup of the files that need to be recovered.

They may have only been on your computer for a short time before being deleted. When deleted files are not available in a backup or your Trash bin, data recovery software may be able to get them back for you. The macOS does not immediately physically remove data from a storage device when it is deleted. The operating system removes the logical links that make the data accessible and marks the storage space as being available for use.

Until the deleted items are overwritten by new information, data recovery software can repair the logical links and restore access. It essentially undeletes the deleted data, making it accessible to the OS and other applications. Many data recovery applications are on the market, and we have tested quite a few of them with varying results.

You can see other macOS solutions if Disk Drill is not right for you by checking our list of data recovery software. Disk Drill offers a streamlined method of recovering deleted files on your Mac without a Time Machine backup. Windows users can also run this intuitive recovery software on their machines.

Check out our review to learn more about recovering data on Windows computers with Disk Drill. You may find it necessary to view some files from a Time Machine backup that was not made on your Mac. You can do that by following these steps:. You might want to recover some files from a Time Machine backup made on another computer. Your Time Machine Restore button will be greyed out if you have not selected a valid file or folder for recovery.

Losing data on your Mac is never pleasant, but the problem can often be minimized if you have Time Machine backups available. You should use the tool regularly to backup your valuable information. Your backups might be the only way to recover from a serious data loss scenario.

The procedures outlined above will help you restore files from Time Machine backups. For the best results, stop using the device with the lost files until recovery is complete. Good luck restoring your data! Robert brings over 30 years of experience in data storage, security, compliance, backup, and recovery to the HandyRecovery team.