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Restoring from a disk image

 

Manually restoring individual files and folders

You can access the contents of a disk image the same way that you access other volumes and external hard drives on Mac OS X. Double-click on the disk image file to mount its filesystem, then navigate the filesystem in the Finder to access individual files and folders. If you have the permission to access the files that you would like to restore, simply drag those items to the volume that you would like to restore them to.

Restoring individual items or an entire disk image to another hard drive using CCC

While you cannot boot Mac OS X from a disk image directly, you can restore the disk image to a volume. When you use CCC to restore the disk image to a volume, the resulting restored volume will be bootable (assuming that you had initially backed up a bootable system). To restore files or an entire filesystem from a disk image:

  1. Launch CCC
  2. Select "Restore from disk image" from the Source menu and locate your backup disk image. CCC will mount the disk image for you.
  3. Choose a volume from the Destination menu. You may choose the startup disk as a destination, but CCC will not permit you to restore system files to the currently-running OS.
  4. Select "Preserve newer files, don't delete anything" from the preconfigured settings menu.
  5. Deselect any items from the list of items to be copied that you do not want to restore.
  6. Click the Clone button.

Restoring system files to your startup disk

If you want to restore system files to your startup disk, you must start up your Macintosh from an installation of Mac OS X on another hard drive, such as a bootable backup created by CCC. Once you have booted your Mac from another volume, follow the steps from the previous section, but choose the "Temporarily archive modified and deleted items" preset instead.

Restoring system files to your startup disk when you don't have a bootable backup

If you do not have an installation of Mac OS X on another hard drive, you can boot your Mac from your Mac OS X Installer DVD and use Disk Utility to restore the entire disk image:

  1. Reboot your computer from the Mac OS X Installer DVD
  2. After the Installer application loads, choose "Disk Utility" from the Utilities menu
  3. From the File menu, choose "Open Disk Image..." and locate the disk image that you would like to restore
  4. In the list in the pane on the left, click on the mounted disk image's volume
  5. Click on the "Restore" tab on the right side of the window
  6. Drag the mounted disk image to the Source field. Leopard users: If the Source field does not accept the dragged volume, right-click on the disk image's mounted volume and choose "Set as source" from the contextual menu.
  7. Drag the hard drive that you would like to restore to into the "Destination" field
  8. Check the box to erase the destination, then click on the Restore button.

Lion-specific instructions for restoring system files to your startup disk when you don't have a bootable backup

Starting with Lion, Apple no longer distributes Mac OS X on a bootable DVD, and this can pose a challenge for step #1 listed above. If you purchased the Lion Installer on a USB flash drive from Apple, you can boot your Mac from that device. You can also use CCC to create a Lion Installer disk if you purchased Lion from the App Store and you have a spare disk. Lastly, if your Mac shipped with Lion, you can hold down Command+R while connected to the Internet to boot from Apple's Recovery server. Once you have booted your Mac from one of these devices, proceed with step 2 from the previous section.

After you have restored your disk image, do the following to create a Recovery HD volume (this video demonstrates the process):

  1. Click on the hard drive device in the list on the left (the volumes have names that you see in the Finder, like "Macintosh HD" whereas the hard drive device has a name that includes the size of the hard drive and a vendor name or serial number, like "111.8 GB ST9129876A")
  2. Click on the Partition tab
  3. Click the "+" button to add a new volume
  4. Manually set the size to 650MB (or 1GB, if that is the smallest you can specify)
  5. Set the name of the new volume to "Recovery HD"
  6. Click the Apply button
  7. Restart your Mac from your newly restored volume, then use CCC to restore the Recovery HD volume from the archive on your startup disk.