Best way to use Time Machine to recover from a crash

[alevasseur14]

Two days ago, I woke up my MacBook to find the screen I left it on, but without the ability to click anything. I chalked it up to something weird and restarted. It never came back... LOL.

Fired up the OS X install disk and, yep, no hard drive to be found. No big deal. It was always full and I wanted a new one anyways. Newegg's shipping me a WD 320 GB as we speak.

What I'm wondering is how I should go about restoring all my data from the Time Machine backups I've been storing. I noticed in the installer that I can just go ahead and restore straight from the Time Machine backup. Nice.

I think my years as a Windows user are still haunting me. I'm not sure I trust it. I was thinking of doing a clean install and then using the Migration Assistant to bring over my apps and whatnot.

Has anyone had to do this so far, and if so, which way did you go about it? Thanks!

 

[ViRGE]

Restoring from the Time Machine backup is just fine, there's no need to complicate it.

 

[randomlinh]

Agreed, just do the Time Machine restore. Worst case, you do it over w/ the migration assistant if something goes wonky. I'm impressed with how OS X handles things like this.. upgrade from 10.4->10.5 I thought I'd want a fresh install.. I did an upgrade and never bothered, heh.

 

[Kaido]

Time Machine = Startup Disk Migration. I tested both over the last two days for my new guide, they both copy the same files over using Migration Assistant. The only benefit to using the Startup Disk to restore is that you get the very very very latest files, vs. whenever Time Machine last backed up your system (usually up to the last hour if your backup HDD was plugged in).

 

[alevasseur14]

I may just do the clean install anyways. My iTunes library is so out of sync with my desktop that it'd be nice to start over in that respect. The nice thing is, if I change my mind, I can always just do the Time Machine restore anyways.

Losing the hard drive has been a funny experience. I've got multiple copies of everything anyways so I'm not concerned about data loss. I'm really excited about getting a bigger, faster hard drive and most of all, to see how this whole Time Machine thing works out.

 

[alevasseur14]

Well, everything's back as it should be!

It was so easy I couldn't believe it! Installed OS X, installed the 10.5.5 combo update I already had downloaded, ran migration assistant and then picked up a couple more updates. Done and done!

P.S. I'm loving this WD Caviar Black Edition 320GB - very snappy!