# Apples Backup won't restore files...



## cyclefreak (Dec 19, 2002)

Believe it or not my 3 year old IBook G4's hard drive crashed... deader than a door knob. Luckily I have backup's on an external WD drive. Okay, I got the IBook back from Apple with a brand new hard drive and OS 10.4.11. With a new OS you don't automatically receive the Backup program. So I went to Apple dot com and downloaded the newest and best Backup program. It was v3.1.2.

Side note: before I tried to use the Backup program to do any restores I move around some of the back up files. The way they were organized on the WD is they were in a folder named "Backups". I had put backups from the IBook in that folder AND backups from a PowerBook G4 also. I noticed that looking in the Backup folder on the external hard drive gave me a head ache, so I decided to make two subfolders. IBook Backup and PwrBook Backup. Then I tried to use FINDER to copy IBooks files into it's new folder and PwrBook files into it's new folder. When FINDER started to copy it said "this will take *4 hours!!!* So I stopped the copy, and instead I selected all of the IBook files and drug them into the new IBook Backup folder. Did the same thing with the PwrBook files. That method only took minutes.. not hours.

Back to the Backup program: I downloaded and installed the Backup 3.1.2 application and 
used it to restore the 'Addressbook FullBackup and 6 AddressBook IncrementalBackups. That worked fine. Then I used Backup to restore one of two HomeFolder Full backups. That worked fine. Then the trouble started. The next file to restore is the second HomeFolder FullBack up. When I tried to do that the Backup program stopped responding. This has became a chronic problem and I couldn't get the program to do anything correctly. I finally uninstalled the v3.1.2 and downloaded the older v3.1.1 version. It won't work either.

When I double click on the Backup program, it starts by opening the dialogue "Welcome to Backup". It shows 4 areas of interest: Home Folder; Personal Date & Settings; iLife; Purchased Music & Video; You also have a chose to continue or restore.

If I click on either continue or restore the program throws up another dialogue that is titled 
"Backup". It shows 3 areas of interest: AddressBook - and shows - Successful Restore on June 27; Home Folder - shows - Successful Restore on June 27; Home Folder 2 - shows - This plan has never been backed up;

At this point the program becomes totally unresponsive. I can cancel it but can't get it to do anything else.

I've read all the help info from Apple and it hasn't helped. I"ve crafted a question to Apple technical but since it's over the week end, I haven't received a response. My thoughts are that it might be because I "moved" some of the files from their original location, or maybe because I made two Full Backups of the Home Folder. There are incremental files following the second Full Backup.

I really hope one of you smart people can help me. This IBook is a business computer and I really need to get these files restored. So far I've run into a brick wall.

Thanks.

Scott Reynolds


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