odzer's blog

Oh well it had to happen sometime. I purchased my laptop way back in May of 2006. The computer has been running smoothly as far as the software is concerned and I have had no major problems except that I was beginning to run out of Hard disk space. So unlike installing the other popular operating system, the reinstall of the Mac was straightforward. Please click on the images for larger versions in case you have difficulty reading any of the text in them.

Step 1
Pop in the OS X disc.

Installing Mac OS

Step 2.
Go away and do something engaging like read a book or something.

Step 3
Adjust some settings, for some strange reason my Mac thought that I was in Thimphu, Bhutan instead of New Delhi, India as far as the Time zone goes.

Glitz and Glamour

Now came the more challenging parts. Backing up all the data that my previous installation had. Now Macs come with this software called “Time Machine” that allow you periodically back up your computer’s drive to an external Hard disk. I had been diligently backing up my former installation of Mac OS but when I connected the hard disk to the laptop after reinstalling the computer was stuck at a dialog box and would not budge from it. After some research I discovered that the reason for this is because both the Time Machine backup as well as the new installation have the same hard drive name, i.e. Macintosh HD.
So I simply canceled the back up, restarted the Mac and renamed the HDD of the new install and ran the “Migration Assistant” utility and backed up the computer from there. However after the migration was over to my utter surprise, all of my emails, music and pictures were still missing from the computer.

Select your country

Now I do not know how you would feel about losing around 7500 emails, about an equal number of photos and around 800 songs but I was not very pleased about it.

Yes yes I do!

Just as I was about to write a really annoying email to steve@apple.com, I had an idea. I opened my old Time Machine external disc and did the following to restore my email. This is a course of action I would suggest to anyone who is in a similar position that I found myself after a fresh install of Mac OS.

1) Navigate down in finder to Username>Library>Mail
2) Rename the Mail folder by selecting and pressing the Enter key, lets say name it Mail (Default)
3) Open Time Machine from the Dock and select the option that allows you to use “Browse other time machine disks”
4) Select the most recent back up from your Time Machine Finder Windows
5) Simply navigate down to Username>Library>Mail
6) Select the mail folder and click “Restore”
7) Now Navigate down to Library>Preferences>com.apple.mail.plist file in your time machine back and restore that as well.
After the restore is complete, simply open your Mail from the dock and you will find an import dialog box and all your email as it was in pristine condition.

Ummmm

Restoring Music and Photos was a simple enough process for me. I simply had to navigate to the respective folders in the Time Machine back up and restore them. One more thing that I noticed that could be trouble some after a restore when it comes to certain Microsoft Office Documents is that they become “read only” this is a very simple process just select the folder in which they rest and: -

1) Right click on the folder.
2) Click on “Get Info”
3) Scroll down and at the very end on the right hand side you will find a small lock icon, click on it and enter your computers administrator password.
4) Now you can edit the permissions for this folder that rest just above the lock. For your own username you can assign “Read and Write”, for Everyone “Read Only” and Unknown “Read Only”. This should be sufficient. Just lock back before you close the dialog box.

Over all I have installed many different operating systems and I must say Mac OS is quite easy as long as you have a good back up. So if you do own a Mac there is a lot of merit in doing periodic Time Machine back ups.