How to do a 'bare metal' restore from Time Machine [ Edited ]

[don102]

Hi there.

I have searched through this forum and WD's main site and cannot find help on ths rather basic question: If I have a massive failure of my computer (hardware dies, stolen, etc) how to I completely restore my time machine backup that is sitting somewhere (hidden to the user) to a new computer?

I am backing up fine to my WD Live NAS, and I can hop in to Time Machine (from my existing computer) to recover individual files, but I do not know how to do a complete restore if I was forced to recover to a new computer. This is one of those things that is kind of hard to test out until you need to do it!!!

I am guessing that I could boot an OS X Lion computer in Recovery mode and restore from a Time Machine volume and that presumably, the backups for the various computers would be available. Is that correct? I don't really have a spare, empty computer to try this with, so any feedback would help.  I am mainly concerned with Disaster Recovery, and rarely use Time Machine to recover individual files that I have accidentally deleted, so I would appreciate any description of how to do a bare metal restore, when the Time Machine share is not 'visible'.

Thanks...

don

[Wizer · Accepted solution]

Even when the share is not visible for manual transfer it will be accessible from Time Machine on any computer in your network..

I haven't try a full restore with the CD but I do not see a reason why it should not work.

You might wanna jump into apple forums to see if any one has done a full restore from a network drive. 

[CamdenMaine]

I disagree that WD NAS Time Machine volume is accessible from any other computer on the network.  I backup from my iMac, and from my (MacBook) laptop, I can see the volume, but can't mount it.  When i invoke TM "Browse Other Time Mchine Disks" from the laptop, I get an empty list.  If I try to mount the backup volume via the finder, I get a Connection Failure.