I created a time machine backup to a USB drive, encrypted partition, subtracting the OS (since i figured we'd reload OS anyway). I then took the mac to the Apple Store, where they changed the bad hard drive out.
When I got back, I tried to restore from the backup. At first I tried on bootup, but that didn't seem to do anything (did encrypted backup hurt me here?) then I loaded the mac back, added my account, updated some software, and tried to recover. I went into "Enter Time Machine" selected my Users folder, and clicked Recover. It did some calcs, said there was a huge amount of data to copy, and looked like it was chugging through – 1 hour progress bars and whatnot. But, i don't see any data on my hard drive.
I should be restoring like to like (10.7.4 => 10.7.4). I can see all the files on the drive, should I just do a file copy? Is there something i'm missing? Or should I do migration assistant – i didn't see the volume on Migr.Asst. before, may have been an issue with encryption.
My guess is no, but is there any way of removing encryption?
Best Answer
For future notes:
I punted. Neither TimeMachine nor MigrationAssistant worked. I mounted the volume and just used rsync.
In the unlikely event that someone else is interested, I have a followup question on the restore.