Disk Utility, in all of its incarnations, has always had a restore function, a way to copy a disk volume or image file to another volume, creating an exact copy. We often think of this as cloning a drive, so you have an exact copy for backup or archiving purposes.
If your Mac is missing a Recovery partition, then you may be able to restore it, by resetting your PRAM. To reset the PRAM, restart your Mac while holding down the âCommand+Option+P+Râ keys until you hear macOSâ distinctive startup chimes for a second time. Format a disk for Windows computers. Repair a storage device. Restore a disk. All the files on the destination volume are erased. Before you restore a volume, copy any files on the destination volume that you want to save to a different volume. You can also use Disk Utility in macOS Recovery to restore a volume.
The advantages of cloning are many, but the one that is repeatedly mentioned in troubleshooting guides, as well as guides to installing new versions of the Mac OS, is the cloneâs ability to be used as a Macâs startup drive. Provided the source for the clone was a bootable startup drive, then the destination will generally also be useable as a bootable startup drive, which is pretty darned convenient.
Disk Utility Restore (The newer version of Disk Utility has undergone a GUI overhaul.)
The restore function isnât limited to creating clones of the startup drive. It can create a copy of any image or volume that can be mounted on your Mac. That makes the restore function extremely versatile, even if itâs largely overlooked in Disk Utility.
Two Versions of Disk Utility
Disk Utility was at version 16.0 at the time of this writing, so there have certainly been more than two versions. But when it comes to the restore feature, Disk Utility hasnât undergone many changes; the biggest was the redesign of the Disk Utility interface that came about with the release of OS X El Capitan.
Because of that major change, weâre going to provide two sets of instructions for using Disk Utilityâs Restore feature; one for OS X Yosemite and earlier, and one for OS X El Capitan and later.
What You Need
Restore will copy the source volume or image file to the destination volume, so youâll need a disk that contains a volume large enough to hold the data from the source volume.
Both the source and destination volumes need to be mounted on your Mac. Restore will work with internal or external volumes.
If youâre planning on restoring from an image file you need to take the additional step of scanning the image file before the restore process. Youâll find instructions for preparing an image file near the end of this article.
Creating a Startup Clone (Booting from the Recovery HD volume allows you to create a clone of your startup drive.)
Using Disk Utilityâs restore capabilities to make a clone of your startup drive has a limitation. Disk Utility uses a block copy method that provides for a faster copy, but it also needs to unmount all of the volumes involved in the restore process. Since the startup drive canât be unmounted, you canât make a clone of the startup drive directly.
Instead, you need to either boot your Mac to another drive that contains the Mac OS, or use the Recovery HD volume to start up and run Disk Utility from. This may seem like an inconvenience, but it provides for both a fast copy and a safe one; since the source drive can be unmounted, no process can make changes to any files resident on the drive.
Macos Restore Source Volume Format Is Not Valid For Restoring Iphone
Letâs start the step-by-step instructions with the current version of Disk Utility.
Using Restore With OS X El Capitan and Later
Go ahead and launch Disk Utility; youâll find it at /Applications/Utilities/, or if you booted from the Recovery HD volume, Disk Utility will be one of the choices in the Utilities window.
In Disk Utilityâs sidebar, select the destination volume you wish to have data copied to.
With the destination volume selected, click the Restore button in Disk Utilityâs toolbar, or select Restore from the Edit menu.
A sheet will drop down, asking you to select the source volume. Use the dropdown menu next to the âRestore from:â text to select the source device, or use the Image button to select a disk image file.
(The dropdown sheet lets you select the source for the restore.)
Warning: The selected destination volume will be erased by the next step. If you need any of the information on the destination drive, make sure you have a backup before proceeding.
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Click the Restore button in the dropdown sheet.
The restore process will begin; if you wish, you can view the process by clicking the disclosure triangle next to the âShow Detailsâ text.
When the copy process is complete, click the Done button.
Copying using the restore function will also copy the volume title from the source to the destination, so youâll now have two volumes with identical names. You may want to change the name of one of the volumes, to make it easier to tell them apart.
Using Restore With OS X Yosemite and Earlier
The earlier version of Disk Utility uses a slightly different user interface. Instead of selecting the destination first, as we did with the version in OS X El Capitan and later, weâre going to select the source volume first.
Launch Disk Utility, located in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder. If youâre booting from the Recovery HD volume, Disk Utility is listed in the OS X Utilities window, which opens automatically.
In the Disk Utility sidebar, select the volume you wish to use as the source. You can change this later if you select the wrong volume.
Click the Restore tab.
The volume you selected should be listed in the Source field. If you wish to change to a different source volume, select the desired source in the Disk Utility sidebar, or use the Image button to select a disk image file.
(Drag a volume to the destination field; once the green plus sign appears, you can drop the volume.)
To select a destination, drag the desired volume from the sidebar to the Destination field. You can also drag a volume mounted on your Desktop to the Destination field.
Warning: The next step will completely erase the contents of the selected destination volume.
Click the Restore button.
A sheet will drop down, asking if you really want to completely erase the destination drive and replace its contents with the contents from the source drive. Click the Erase button to continue the restore process.
If requested, provide your administrator password, and then click OK.
The erase and restore process will begin; a status message and progress bar will appear near the bottom of the Disk Utility window.
When the restore is complete, the volumes will be remounted on your Desktop, and Disk Utility will remove the selected volume from the Destination field, leaving it empty.
The restore process also copies the source volumeâs title to the destination volume; you may want to rename one or the other.
Restoring From an Image File (Any Version of Disk Utility) (Preparing an image file for restoring can be done from within the Disk Utility app.)
Image files, those compressed .dmg files often used for distributing apps and data, can also be the source for the restore function. The process isnât very different, except the image file needs to be prepared before itâs selected as the restore source.
The process scans the image file, calculates the checksum, and reorders the files within the image.
In Disk Utility, select Images, Scan Image for Restore.
Browse to where the image is stored, then select the image file and click the Open button.
Provide an administrator password, if asked, and then click the OK button.
When the scan is complete, click the Done button.
At this point, the image file can be used as the source in Disk Utilityâs restore process.
Image File Limitations
Scanning an image file has a few limitations that can prevent some .dmg files from being properly scanned. Generally, if the image file uses the compressed format it should sail through the scan process. Read/write formats and hybrid images tend to cause errors. If you need to, you can convert the image file format using the Convert command in the Disk Utility Image menu.
For more handy tricks and guides including the new macOS Mojave, be sure to check out the Rocket Yard Tech Tips section.
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Azure Backup creates recovery points that are stored in geo-redundant recovery vaults. When you restore from a recovery point, you can restore the whole VM or individual files. This article explains how to restore a complete VM using CLI. In this tutorial you learn how to:
For information on using PowerShell to restore a disk and create a recovered VM, see Back up and restore Azure VMs with PowerShell.
Use Azure Cloud Shell
Azure hosts Azure Cloud Shell, an interactive shell environment that you can use through your browser. You can use either Bash or PowerShell with Cloud Shell to work with Azure services. You can use the Cloud Shell preinstalled commands to run the code in this article without having to install anything on your local environment.
To start Azure Cloud Shell:
To run the code in this article in Azure Cloud Shell:
If you choose to install and use the CLI locally, this tutorial requires that you are running the Azure CLI version 2.0.18 or later. Run
az --version to find the version. If you need to install or upgrade, see Install the Azure CLI.
Prerequisites
This tutorial requires a Linux VM that has been protected with Azure Backup. To simulate an accidental VM deletion and recovery process, you create a VM from a disk in a recovery point. If you need a Linux VM that has been protected with Azure Backup, see Back up a virtual machine in Azure with the CLI.
Backup overview
When Azure initiates a backup, the backup extension on the VM takes a point-in-time snapshot. The backup extension is installed on the VM when the first backup is requested. Azure Backup can also take a snapshot of the underlying storage if the VM is not running when the backup takes place.
By default, Azure Backup takes a file system consistent backup. Once Azure Backup takes the snapshot, the data is transferred to the Recovery Services vault. To maximize efficiency, Azure Backup identifies and transfers only the blocks of data that have changed since the previous backup.
Macos Restore Source Volume Format Is Not Valid For Restoring Free
When the data transfer is complete, the snapshot is removed and a recovery point is created.
List available recovery points
To restore a disk, you select a recovery point as the source for the recovery data. As the default policy creates a recovery point each day and retains them for 30 days, you can keep a set of recovery points that allows you to select a particular point in time for recovery.
To see a list of available recovery points, use az backup recoverypoint list. The recovery point name is used to recover disks. In this tutorial, we want the most recent recovery point available. The
--query [0].name parameter selects the most recent recovery point name as follows:
Restore a VM disk
Important
It is very strongly recommended to use Az CLI version 2.0.74 or later to get all the benefits of a quick restore including managed disk restore. It is best if user always uses the latest version.
Managed disk restore
If the backed up VM has managed disks and if the intent is to restore managed disks from the recovery point, you first provide an Azure storage account. This storage account is used to store the VM configuration and the deployment template that can be later used to deploy the VM from the restored disks. Then, you also provide a target resource group for the managed disks to be restored into.
This will restore managed disks as unmanaged disks to the given storage account and will not be leveraging the 'instant' restore functionality. In future versions of CLI, it will be mandatory to provide either the target-resource-group parameter or 'restore-as-unmanaged-disk' parameter.
Unmanaged disks restore
If the backed up VM has unmanaged disks and if the intent is to restore disks from the recovery point, you first provide an Azure storage account. This storage account is used to store the VM configuration and the deployment template that can be later used to deploy the VM from the restored disks. By default, the unmanaged disks will be restored to their original storage accounts. If user wishes to restore all unmanaged disks to one single place, then the given storage account can also be used as a staging location for those disks too.
In additional steps, the restored disk is used to create a VM.
As mentioned above, the unmanaged disks will be restored to their original storage account. This provides the best restore performance. But if all unmanaged disks need to be restored to given storage account, then use the relevant flag as shown below.
The output is similar to the following example, which shows the restore job is InProgress:
When the Status of the restore job reports Completed, the necessary information (VM configuration and the deployment template) has been restored to the storage account.
Create a VM from the restored disk
The final step is to create a VM from the restored disks. You can use the deployment template downloaded to the given storage account to create the VM.
Fetch the Job details![]()
The resultant job details give the template URI that can be queried and deployed. Use the job show command to get more details for the triggered restored job.
Macos Restore Source Volume Format Is Not Valid For Restoring Data
The output of this query will give all details but we are interested only in the storage account contents. We can use the query capability of Azure CLI to fetch the relevant details
Fetch the deployment template
The template is not directly accessible since it is under a customer's storage account and the given container. We need the complete URL (along with a temporary SAS token) to access this template.
First, extract the template blob Uri from job details
Macos Restore Source Volume Format Is Not Valid For Restoring Windows 10
The template blob Uri will be of this format and extract the template name
So, the template name from the above example will be
azuredeploy1fc2d55d-f0dc-4ca6-ad48-aca0519c0232.json and the container name is myVM-daa1931199fd4a22ae601f46d8812276
Now get the SAS token for this container and template as detailed here
Deploy the template to create the VMMacos Restore Source Volume Format Is Not Valid For Restoring Data
Now deploy the template to create the VM as explained here.
To confirm that your VM has been created from your recovered disk, list the VMs in your resource group with az vm list as follows:
Next steps
In this tutorial, you restored a disk from a recovery point and then created a VM from the disk. You learned how to:
Advance to the next tutorial to learn about restoring individual files from a recovery point.
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