6.9 Restoring Files from a Backup

< Day Day Up >

Okay, you're swimming along and everything's going fine with your Mac. You've gotten into the routine of backing up basic files to your iDisk every day, and you're backing up more important stuff to CDs or to an external drive. Great, you've bought into the backup religion.

Then one day, your hard disk starts making this odd clicking noise and the next thing you know, your system crashes, you can't reboot, and you're in the middle of a project. Not so great. What are you going to do?

Well, first, if you've purchased an AppleCare Protection Plan ( http://www.apple.com/support/products/proplan.html ) for your Mac, call AppleCare and tell them what happened . Their response is to tell you that your hard drive just crashed and that you need to send your Mac in to replace the hard drive. The next day, you get a package from AppleCare so you can send your Mac in for repair, and a couple days later you get a call, saying that the data on your drive was unrecoverable but a new drive was inserted and you'd be getting your cherished Mac back the next day.

Great. You're getting a new drive and all of your data has been lost. Ah, but you have those backups waiting in the wings you can restore from, so all hope is not lost, right? You have been backing up, right? Good.

When you get your Mac back, one of the very first things you should do if you've been using iSync (see Chapter 9) is to synchronize your Mac with the iSync server. The reason you're going to do this first is because iSync will pull down your Address Book contacts, iCal calendars, and to-do items, as well as all of your bookmarks for Safari. Okay, that's step one; now on to the bigger task at hand: restoring data from your backups.

6.9.1 Restoring from an iDisk

Earlier, we backed up the following items to our iDisk:

Address Book contacts
Stickies notes
iCal calendars
Safari settings
Keychain (for passwords)
My Preferences folder ( ~/Library/Preferences ), which contains the settings not only for applications, but also for how I've set up my Mac

Of these, the two most important items that I've backed up to my iDisk are the Keychain data and my Preferences folder. Since I've already used iSync to get my Address Book, iCal, and Safari data back, the only other thing I need to restore is the Stickies notes. To restore these three items, launch Backup and follow these steps.

Before you restore from any backup, you should quit all other running applications, particularly if you're restoring Preferences.

Select Restore from iDisk in the pop-up menu. You'll notice that Backup's interface changes to show you just the Items you've previously backed up.
Click on the checkboxes next to Stickies notes, Keychain (for passwords), and the Preferences folder to select these Items to be restored.
Click on the Restore Now button.
Alert windows appear, asking you whether you're sure that you want to replace the data that's on your Mac with the data from your backup. Since you know that this is what you want to do, click on the checkbox next to Apply to All, and then click on the Replace button to start restoring files.

Backup's window collapses as it restores the data on your Mac, and it expands to its normal size afterward. If the restore operation was successful, you'll see a message that says "Last restore successful" beneath the pop-up menu at the top of Backup's window.

6.9.2 Restoring from CD/DVD

Restoring from a CD or DVD backup set is actually quite painless; just follow these steps:

Select Restore from CD/DVD in the pop-up menu.

Backup immediately prompts you to insert the Master disc from the backup set from which you want to restore. If your CD or DVD backup spanned over multiple discs, the last disc of the backup should be labeled as Master.

This refers back to the earlier section, Section 6.7, where I mentioned it was important for you to label the discs exactly how Backup instructs you. Sure, you can always label the fourth disc of a four-disc backup set as "Disc 4" instead of "Master," but if someone else needs to restore from that backup, how are they to know that "Disc 4" is the "Master"?

Insert the Master disc from the backup you want to restore.
Backup's window displays the Items that were backed up to disc.
Click on the checkboxes for the Items you want to restore.
Click on the Restore Now button to start restoring files.

When you click on the Restore Now button, you'll hear your CD or DVD drive kick into high gear as it restores the data from the disc onto your Mac. If the data you need isn't on the Master disc and the backup spanned multiple discs, you will be prompted to insert the appropriate CD or DVD.

After the Items you've checked have been restored, Backup's window opens back up, and you'll see the message "Last restore successful" beneath the pop-up menu.

6.9.3 Restoring from a Drive

If you have only one backup set going to a Drive, restoring data from that backup is pretty simple. However, if you have multiple backup Sets, you'll first need to select which set you want to restore from before proceeding with the restoration.

6.9.3.1 Restoring when you only have one backup set

Depending on how you have your backups configured to run, you may only have one backup going to an external drive, such as with the earlier example where I backed up my Home folder to an external FireWire drive. Follow these steps to restore from that backup set:

Launch Backup and select Restore from Drive in the pop-up menu.
Make sure that the Drive you want to restore from is mounted on your Mac. To do so, open a Finder window and look for the drive in the Sidebar. If you see the drive there, you're set. However, if you don't, you'll need to connect the drive to your Mac; otherwise , you'll see the alert message shown in Figure 6-33.

Figure 6-33. If a Drive is not connected to your Mac when you select either "Back up to Drive" or "Restore from Drive," you will see this alert message, reminding you to connect the drive.
Make sure that the backup set you want to restore from is checked in the Backup Items list.
If you want to restore everything from that set, just click on the Restore Now button. However, if you want to restore a particular file or folder from that backup set, select the set by clicking on its checkbox and then click on the Info button (or use the keyboard shortcut -I) to open the QuickPicks drawer . For this example, I'll just restore my Pictures folder, as shown in Figure 6-34.

Figure 6-34. Use the QuickPicks drawer to select specific items to restore.
After selecting the Pictures folder in the QuickPicks drawer, if you click on the black disclosure triangle next to the folder's name , you can see the items contained within that will be restored. If you want to, you could select the specific file you need and just restore that; however, for this example, we'll restore all of the contents of the Pictures folder by clicking on the Restore Now button.
Backup's window will collapse, but as it starts to restore files, it will first query you about whether the restoration should overwrite any files that already exist, as shown in Figure 6-35.

Figure 6-35. If an item you're restoring might overwrite something on your hard drive, Backup queries you first (at top). To restore everything, click on the Apply to All checkbox and hit the Replace button (bottom).

To restore all of the items in the Pictures folder, click on the checkbox next to Apply to All and then click on the Replace button to continue with the restoration process.

After you click on the Replace button, Backup restores the file to your Mac from the .backup file on the Drive. When the restoration is complete, Backup's window opens up and reveals the message "Last restore successful" below the pop-up menu.

6.9.3.2 Restoring when you have multiple backup sets

If you have multiple backup sets going to a Drive, whether the backup is going to the same drive or not, you will need to select the proper set to restore from. To do this, follow these steps:

Select Restore from Drive from the pop-up menu.
Click on the Set button.
In the selection sheet, locate the appropriate .backup file from the Drives shown in the sheet's Sidebar (any disks mounted on your Mac should show up in the Sidebar).
After selecting the .backup file you want to restore from, click on the sheet's Choose button.
As with conducting a restoration from a single backup, if there are any particular files you want to restore, click on the backup Item's checkbox and then hit -I to open the QuickPick drawer, from which you can pick and choose the files to restore.
Click on the Restore Now button to start the restoration process; if you are overwriting any files, you will see similar alert windows as what appears in Figure 6-35.

When Backup completes the restoration process, its window opens up to its normal size, and the message "Last restore successful" should appear below the pop-up menu.