How to Restore Data on Mac from a Time Machine Backup

While Macs have a great reputation for being stable and rarely experiencing major issues, the reality is that sometimes things can go wrong. Typically this happens when either a hard drive fails or an OS X system update goes completely awry, but if you have set up Time Machine backups on the Mac like all users should, then you will discover that restoring an entire systems hard drive from that Time Machine backup is really quite easy.

To be perfectly clear, restoring Mac OS X and all of your personal stuff from a previously made Time Machine backup is really only needed in extreme situations, and fortunately this is not something that is frequently required or necessary. Nonetheless, it’s good to understand how this process works, so if you ever find yourself in a situation where you have a new hard drive (or even a new Mac), or you just need to perform a complete restore of a previous backup, this tutorial will cover that restoration process of everything with Time Machine.

Note this aims to recover and restore an entire Mac, including all files, all applications, and OS X system software, everything that is made from and contained within a Time Machine backup. If you only want or need to re-install OS X, you can use Internet Recovery for that, which will replace only the system software portion, without any personal files or applications.

Restoring and Recovering an Entire Mac System from Time Machine Backups

1.Connect the Time Machine backup drive to the Mac if you have not done so already

2.Start up or reboot the Mac and hold down the Command+R keys simultaneously, this will boot into the OS X Recovery Partition

3.At the “OS X Utilities” screen, choose “Restore from Time Machine Backup” and click on the Continue button

4.Select the Time Machine volume (either the external back up drive, network Time Capsule, or otherwise)

5.Select the date and time of the Time Machine backup you wish to restore the entire Mac from, and click on “Continue” – this begins the restoration process from the backup you selected, generally you’ll want to pick the most recently made backup but advanced users may choose another date (keep in mind if you pick an earlier date you will lose files and data created from that date onward)

6.When Time Machine has finished restoring everything, the Mac will reboot into the restored state from the chosen backup date
Pretty easy, right? You’ll be back on your feet in no time with this method of restoring a hard drive from Time Machine backups.

Of course it may go without saying that this requires a recent Time Machine backup to even restore the Mac from in the first place, which is why setting up Time Machine, letting it perform it’s backup routine on schedule, and ideally starting and completing manual backups before installing system updates or modifying major OS X components is so strongly recommended.

If you haven't backup data to a Time Machine Backup,you can recover lost data from Mac directly with the help of third-part Mac Data Recovery software

No matter it was been deleted, formatted, lost, reinstalled the Mac computer system, or other unknown reasons, what you need is Data Recovery for Mac! This professional recovery tool helps you to recover lost or deleted documents, photos, video, media, email, archive and more files from your Mac hard disk or most external storage devices, iDevices, USB drives, memory cards, digital camera, SD cards, mobile phone, and MP3/MP4 players, etc., due to accidental deleting, formatting, virus infection, improper operation, unexpected power failure, and other unknown reasons. In addition, Data Recovery for Mac allows you to recover lost or deleted SMS, contacts, photos, videos, note, calendar and call history via iTunes. What’s more, you can preview all your files including music, images, videos, documents, archive files and more before recover your data with the free trial version.

Multi-mode Data Recovery Tool for Mac

• Lost File Recovery on Mac - Recover files deleted because of empty the Recycle Bin or Command + Delete, and lost files from formatted or corrupted partitions with original file name and structure tree.
• Mac Raw Recovery - Restore your data files on a deeper scan mode.
• Mac Partition Recovery - Restore lost data and partition due to partition loss, partition error, and partition deleting.
• iPhone & iTunes Recovery - Recover deleted or lost data files like SMS, contacts, photos, videos, note, call history, calendar and more for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch from iTunes backup file, only if they have been synced with iTunes before.
• Resume Recovery - Save your scanning result, and import to recover data later without rescanning.

How to Recover Lost Data from Mac Without Backup?

Data Recovery for Mac allows you to recover data from Mac quickly, safely and thoroughly, not only document, but also image, video, audio, Email, archive, and more.

It offers you 4 recovery modes to retrieve your lost data from Mac and other removable devices. Let’s check the steps one by one.

First, install and run this Mac data recovery on your computer, and you’ll get the interface as follows.
Keep it in mind: don't install it on the disk where you lost your data, in case you overwrite it.

Lost File Recovery

After clicking on the "Lost File Recovery", you'll get the interface as follow:

Here, you can choose a logical drive where you lost your files, and then hit on the "Scan" to search it.

Note: You can "Enable Deep Scan" to recover files lost from your formatted disk.

After the scan, you can preview and recover the files you need. Check the file and click to "Recover".

Note:

1. You can preview photos, documents, emails, parts of videos and audio files.
2. You can also check the file validity before recovery.
Raw Recovery

After clicking on the "Raw Recovery", you'll get the interface as follows:

Select a drive that you want to recover files from and hit on the "Scan" to find lost files.

Before scanning, you can choose to scan all files or only scan for deleted files to save time at the interface bottom.
Also, you can set specific file types to scan with the File Filter, such as photos, videos, documents, etc. even the specified file formats.

When the scan finishes, check the files you want to recover.

Partition Recovery

After clicking on the "Partition Recovery", you'll get the interface as follows:

Choose the disk from which you lost partitions, and begin to scan.

You can choose to use "Quickly Search", which can find your recently lost partitions in seconds, or "Completely Search" which can find all lost partitions and takes more time.

When lost partitions are found, select a partition that you want to recover, and continue to scan the contents on it for recovery.

Then preview and check the files you want to perform the recovery.

Resume Recovery

Click on the "Resume Recovery" to import the saved scanning result file.

Then you can directly preview and check to recover the file you want.

If you lost data on your iPhone,you can use this Mac Data Recovery to restore iPhone data from iTunes backup.

If you haven't backup iPhone data to iTunes before,to directly recover lost data from iPhone,you need to use this professional iPhone Data Recovery software,please read this use guide about how to recover lost data from iPhone 6 directly.

Do note that you can re-install OS X without a Time Machine backup, but you can lose personal files that way. Having frequent backups is basically essential, so if you haven’t done so yet, do yourself a favor and get Time Machine configured with your Mac, hopefully you’ll never need to use the backup service, but if you do, you’ll be happy you set it up.

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