2
USE MIGRATION ASSISTANT Your
Macintosh HD now contains nothing
but a clean copy of macOS. On restart,
Migration Assistant will offer to restore
files. Choose “From a Mac, Time Machine
backup, or startup disk” and click
Continue.2
CHOOSE YOUR BACKUP Select
Restore From Time Machine Backup.
When prompted, select the Time Machine
backup drive as the Restore Source, then
confirm the backup you want to use.
Next, confirm the destination to restore
to, usually Macintosh HD.1
REINSTALL MACOS Alternatively, you
can start from Recovery (see above)
and use Disk Utility to erase your startup
drive: see bit.ly/apple-erasedisk. Back at
macOS Utilities, use Reinstall macOS: see
bit.ly/apple-reinsmacosrec.1
DOWNLOAD THE APP You’ll find that
all the major cloud services have free
apps available for iPadOS. Open the App
Store and search for the name of the
service you want. Get the app and wait
for it to complete downloading and
installing.3
RESTORE FILES Having confirmed
the location of your backup, choose
what to restore from it. Be sure to include
your main user account. If you miss
anything, re-run Migration Assistant from
the Utilities folder in Applications.3
RESTORE YOUR DATA The
destination drive is erased and
replaced with your backup, which may
take up to several hours. Since this
restores everything, it’s not a way to
save space, but may fix problems that
have arisen on the drive.HOW TO Restore files after reinstalling macOS
HOW TO Reinstall Macintosh HD from Time Machine
Tag files and
folders with
names and colors
to make them
easier to find in
the sidebar.Check your drive with
Disk Utility
IT CAN BE AN EASY FIX FOR
STORAGE GLITCHES
If a drive is acting oddly, run Disk Utility,
from the Utilities folder in Applications.
Select a drive and click First Aid. It’ll
report any problems and usually repair
them. Most repairs can’t be done on the
drive you started up from, so in this case
restart from Recovery and run Disk
Utility from there. If First Aid reports
problems that can’t be fixed, ensure
you’ve an up-to-date backup, erase the
drive and restore (see above). This often
works, but in the worst case the drive
might need replacing.