Clean Lion install, keeping Time Machine history?

I have a 2011 unibody MBP, and have been gathering kludge on it for some time, and on previous machines (2007 MBP, 2004 Powerbook) whose data I've migrated over using the Migration Assitant. I'd like to, at some point soon, do a fresh install of Lion, grab my data from backup (or a disk image clone), and reinstall my applications (only the ones I'm currently using, with no detritus from other apps I've installed, used, and since uninstalled).
However, I use a Time Capsule (1 TB) for backups, and wanted to know two things:
Is it possible, after doing the install, to have the previous history of my computer (on the Time Capsule) integrated with my current and future Time Machine backups? (I.e., the Time Capsule sees the new, clean machine as the same machine, and allows me to step into my file history and grab stuff, if need be.)
If the answer to the above question is yes, how would I do this?
Apologies in advance if this question has been answered elsewhere. A cursory perusal of the discussions here didn't turn up anything; but I know there's the chance I could have missed something.
Thanks,
Paul

Having no answer, I took the decision to experiment.
I renamed the new external USB HDD with the same name as the older (soon to be replaced) ones and copied via Finder all the files on it (Aperture libraries, videos, documents).
By using Time Machine while on the new drive (not backing up, but just looking at older backups), I was able to see the previous versions of the external USB HDD files. So I thought that was that easy.
So I decided to manually trigger a new TM backup. However, it computed something like close to 500 GB to backup. Thus eventhough in terms of history for now I can trick TM to think it is the same HDD, when it comes to create a new backup, it simply wants to rebackup everything.
Now I'm getting worried because:
I don't know if the history will be kept after the backup has run;
Because it will push 500GB of data to the TM storage, it might fill it up and TM will start to remove older backup whereas this would have been unnecessary.
Note: I don't rely solely on TM for backup, I use Crashplan as well. So if I lose TM, it is "OK" as I could always restore something from Crashplan, but then for the oldest backup (for the last 2 years) I would only have one copy instead of 2... It is not that critical as I do not think I deleted something I would like to restore from that time period. But our of curiosity I would like to still found out how to properly change an external HDD that was backed-up by Time Machine without losing the history.

Similar Messages

Replacing external disk but keeping Time Machine history

Today I have a 500 GB USB3 HDD connected to the Mac and backed-up by Time Machine.
This HDD has less than 30GB free space and I have a replacement one (a bigger size and faster HDD).
I have copied the files from the old to the new USB3 HDD (using Finder as this is just pictures, videos, musique, docs, so nothing complicated that would require cloning).
To keep the history of modifications and deleted files from the old external HDD once I use exclusively the new external HDD, how shall I do that?
Having the same HDD name is enough?
Thank you for your help

Having no answer, I took the decision to experiment.
I renamed the new external USB HDD with the same name as the older (soon to be replaced) ones and copied via Finder all the files on it (Aperture libraries, videos, documents).
By using Time Machine while on the new drive (not backing up, but just looking at older backups), I was able to see the previous versions of the external USB HDD files. So I thought that was that easy.
So I decided to manually trigger a new TM backup. However, it computed something like close to 500 GB to backup. Thus eventhough in terms of history for now I can trick TM to think it is the same HDD, when it comes to create a new backup, it simply wants to rebackup everything.
Now I'm getting worried because:
I don't know if the history will be kept after the backup has run;
Because it will push 500GB of data to the TM storage, it might fill it up and TM will start to remove older backup whereas this would have been unnecessary.
Note: I don't rely solely on TM for backup, I use Crashplan as well. So if I lose TM, it is "OK" as I could always restore something from Crashplan, but then for the oldest backup (for the last 2 years) I would only have one copy instead of 2... It is not that critical as I do not think I deleted something I would like to restore from that time period. But our of curiosity I would like to still found out how to properly change an external HDD that was backed-up by Time Machine without losing the history.

Inherit Time Machine History on Reformatted External Hard Drive?

A few days ago the external hard drive I use to store all my data got corrupted. This external drive is also the location of my home folder (I moved it off the primary disk to have more space). The main OS system disk is fine and I was able to login to the guest account, but couldn't log in to my primary account since the drive wasn't working properly.
From the guest account I ran disk utility on the external drive and it was unable to fix it and it required reformatting. I reformatted the drive and restored the data to it from the my Time Machine backup. I then was able to log back in to my primary account. As far as I can tell all my files are there. However now when I open Time Machine there is no history.
Based on other info I've found on these forums and others, by reformatting the drive (even with the same name), Time Machine treats this as a new drive and wants to start a new Time Machine history for it. I've learned about the inherit history commands that I can run but before I do that I had a couple questions:
1. If the history is still available, should I be able to see that when I manually browse the contents of the Time Machine drive? There is a folder with a "full sized" backup but I don't see any subfolders with incremental backups.
2. If the command fails to link history, is there an alternative to get it back - or should I just format the Time Machine drive and start a new full backup. It seems like everything restored ok, but I'm nervous about reformatting the backup.
3. Might there be a better configuration for my home folder storage for day to day use and backup purposes? With this issue, it was unsettling being effectively locked out of the machine since the home folder is on the external drive. Also it seemed doing a "system" restore could only restore the system drive and not the "complete system" including the external drive. It would be nice if I could just restore everything from Time Machine in one shot without having to shuffle things around, reformat manually etc.
I'm running Mavericks on a Mac Mini if that helps. My external drive is 2TB with about 1.25TB of data currently and my Time Machine disk is 1.5TB. System disk is 1TB.
Thanks!

Your best option is to start another backup on a new hard drive. You should do that anyway, as one backup is not enough to be safe. Put the old drive aside until you're sure you'll no longer need the data on it, then erase it and start over.

HT201250 Can I back up using Time Machine if I have some files already on the ExHD, or do I need a clean ExHD to use Time Machine?

Can I back up using Time Machine if I have some files already on the ExHD, or do I need a clean ExHD to use Time Machine?

If you try to use a new disk with time machine, it will try to reformat your EXHD. so I would save the items on your EXHD before backing up with time machine or partitioning your EXHD in disk utility

Can i revert to snow leopard from lion without a time machine backup?

can I revert to snow leopard from lion without a time machine backup?

You can with a Snow Leopard DVD, but if you don't have that or a Time Machine backup there's no way.

I am setting up a new Time Capsule to replace another hard drive. Is there any way to include the the Time Machine history from the old drive on the new Time Capsule?

I am setting up a new Time Capsule to replace another hard drive. Is there any way to include the the Time Machine history from the old drive on the new Time Capsule?

Check item #18 of Time Machine FAQ, particularly the material in #3 of the "How to" section.
By the way, you've been misled by poor field labeling on this forum into typing a large part of your message into the field intended for the subject. In the future just type a short summary of your post into that field and type the whole message into the field below that.

Changing Boot Drives and Keep Your Time Machine History

A problem with Time Machine is that it is specific to the target and backup drives. Change one or the other and TM will want to do a new full backup. If you don't have enough space, it will delete your old backups. HOWEVER, this is a way to install a new boot (or other) drive that TM is backing up and get it to pick up where it left off doing incremental backups. This is extremely helpful if you change your boot drive. In my case, I moved from a HDD to an SSD but wanted to keep my history intact. TIme Machine "knows" which drive to backup based on the UUID (unique drive identifier) so merely changing the name of the drive in the Finder won't do it. You need to change the UUID in the latest backup of TM.
Note: This is not for the faint of heart or technically challenged. It also requires a mild knowledge of unix or at least the ability to follow instructions TO THE LETTER! You will change the UUID from the Latest Backup in Time Machine from the "old" drive to the "new" drive thus tricking TM into thinking the new drive is the old drive and it will continue to do incremental backups of the new drive. The technique described below was originally developed under OS 10.5 (and posted on the MAC OS HINTS 10.5 blog but I have just used it under Snow Leopard. It might work for newer OSs but I haven't tried them. I actually did 2 things: 1) Installed a larger TM drive and 2) installed a SSD as a boot drive. I will post under a different title to provide information on installing a larger TM drive since putting that information here may be confusing.
You will need 2 Unix commands: xattr and fsaclctl. xattr is included in OS 10.6 Unix shell but fsaclctl is not. You will have to get fsaclctl from a version of OS 10.5 using the techniques described in the article posted below. I had an old 10.5 disc and found it in: /sbin/fsaclctl at the root directory of my 10.5 hard drive. I also performed the technicque described below logged in as root but this may merely logged in as an administrotor.
** How to change your boot (or any other) drive and get Time Machine to just pick up where it left off doing incremental backups and not do a full backup of the new drive:
1) Turn OFF Time Machine
2) Install the new drive
3) Clone the old drive to the new drive (in my case HDD -> SSD) using SuperDuper, CarbonCopyCloner or even Disk Utility
4) Make sure you have both xattr and fsaclctl commands installed
5) Open Terminal
6) Follow the instructions here:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090213071015789&query=time+machine +new+disc
Note: you may need to use the command switch "l" (the letter l) to see the ascii version of the UUID
sudo xattr -l com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID my_partition
Note: Unix uses spaces (white space) as delimiters and is always case sensitive so if you have spaces in the name of your drives, you MUST put the drive name in quotation marks:
if the drive name is: My HDD then to list the contents of the drive in Unix would use the command ls thus:
> ls "My HDD"
will list the contents of My HDD
(the command: > ls My HDD (without quotation marks) will produce an error - no such file or directory)
When you've followed the above procedure and turned Time Machine back on, the first time TM may warn you that the disc has been changed and "someone may be trying to trick your computer" into using the new drive. Answer: do the backup
I wish I could take credit for this brilliant technique but I just followed it and it worked for me. I also read the entire thread before starting.

The two drives are handled as separate drives, even if they have the same name.
In essence, the old backups are from a drive that's no longer connected; see #E3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

How do a clean install from Time Machine Backup which is in other partition of internal hard drive

I have 2 partitions in my internal hard drive they are
1. Mac OS (Sysem Files)
2. HDD (Other Personal Documents).
I did Time Machine Backup in HDD partition. So now i want to do clean install from the Time Machine Backup without format the whole drive since my system not booting meant that system crashed and cant boot in anyway (Just consider ). Also I have MAC bootable USB stick.
Thanks in advance .

Having never seen a setup like that, I'm not sure how it will work.
In theory, just erase the Mac OS volume, then install, choosing to recover from a Time Machine backup.
When you boot into Recovery, open Disk Utility and select the Mac OS volume, not the whole disk. Erase it, then quit DU and restore from the Time Machine backup. However, this is the part I'm not certain of. I would imagine the partition with TM backup will be mounted, but I don't know.
If you can't see the Time Machine backup from the Recovery HD on the drive, try it from the USB Recovery stick (it is a Recovery USB and not the old Lion install USB, correct?)
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4718
If you don't have a "built-in" recovery HD because of your partitioning, then you would have to boot from that USB Recovery disk.
Your setup is severely flawed. A backup on the same drive as the data is not a backup. You will lose everything with a disk failure.
Also, partitioning off your OS on a Mac is not necessary and is probably counterproductive. OS X is not Windows.

Cannot clean install- Only time machine works

Hello!
I am currently running into aa few problems with my Macbook pro 15" mid 2009 laptop. I have had some troubles with the computer consistently beachballing, and freezing up so I decided I had enough and wanted to start from sqaure one. So I bought new Ram (corsair 2x 4gb 1066MHz), and a new hard drive (Seagate Momentus XT 500gb) and subsequently installed the two.
Now for the root of my problem- I cannnot for the lfe of me get Lion or snow leopard to install! It gets about 80% of the way and the installation will fail saying to contact the software manufacturer. Luckily I have a bootable external drive which I have used for diagnostics and I am coming up empty. Disc utility is claiming the drive is perfectly fine, and Memtest is saying the ram is fine. I was searching for a solution so I decided totry and install from a time machine backup which worked fine. Very weird.
Any ideas on what would cause my computer to reject a clean install?

You may have a hardware fault. Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store to have the machine tested.

Clean Install VS Time Machine for "out of the box" performance

Hi all ^^
Just under a year a go I made the leap of PC to Mac and have never looked back, im super happy with my Mac however I have been experiancing a decrease in performance since Ive been using it, back when I was using a PC I clean installed the OS once a year and then proceeded to add my files back, thus restoring my PC to full performance.
Ive been reading around these forums looking at Time Machine backups, hoping to see 'how much' gets restored when you perform a recovery from time machine, and from what I have read is that everything gets restored. So my question is purely for some advice and clarification
"If I want to restore my Macbook to its "out of the box" performance, Is it viable for me to use a Time Machine back up?"
if not
"If Time Machine Back ups wont help restoring performance, Would it be possible to Clean Install and then extract purely the Files from my TM Back up?" I read another user had issues, the Mac recognised the files belonged to another mac and he couldent use them.
So I wont waffle on any furthur, but im looking for the easist way to clean install or restore performance to my Mac, a long term solution I can use each year
Please and Thank you
Em

Thankyou for your answer
Im quite a clean freak when it comes to my PC, I keep my desktop bare, things I dont use remain unloaded.etc
I think as I am without a Defrag or Disk Clean up tool I feel abit helpless to maintain optimal standards. I not very experianced with the in's and out's of computers but all I really want on my Mac are my Files, Applications and the OS, nothing more.
I appreciate your time and experiance, so ild ask instead: In your experiance is it worth performing a clean install? I have hadly any junk on my Mac, and from the tone of your post you beleive a program such as MacKeeper would be sufficent?
Futhurmore a clean install once a year isnt worth it? I depend alot on what people have told me, so I may have fallen victim to a rumour :S

Hard Drive Erase, Clean Install and Time Machine

I am currently running OS X 10.10.3 and I want to do a clean install. All my content is backed up with Time Machine via external drive.
First, how do I erase my hard drive and install a fresh version of OS X 10.10.3?
Second, is it better to use a USB drive for the clean install or just you the Recovery Mode?
Last, once i finally have a clean installation of OS X 10.10.3, am i able to access my external drive via time machine to bring back some of my old files...i have read that the folder in the external drive is not accessible and not accessible through time machine.
I appreciate the response and guidance!

Hello Jacob,
All of these are good questions to have when erasing and installing OS X Yosemite. To answer your first question you would need to boot to either your Recovery HD or through the Recovery USB and follow the steps in the first article below. Either option will get the task accomplished and will install OS X Yosemite. For your final question about restoring from a Time Machine back up, you will see the option to restore when going through the setup process of your Mac. Let me know if the information below is of help or need further assistance.
OS X Yosemite: Erase and reinstall OS X
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18869
OS X: About Recovery Disk Assistant
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202294
OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18848
Take it easy,
-Norm G.

Clean install, migration, time machine

I am not a MAC OSX specialist in any way, but I would like to share what I have found out the hard way about the clean install.
1) Never do this unless you are absolutely sure that you have complete back up. Time machine cannot restore to the latest backup status, it can only go back to full backups and those are not made very often. In my case it was July 29, 2012. What a surprise! . Do the vital backups by hand. I propose copying your home folder to an external disc or usb pen drive. Copy Application folder as well. Why? If you are fond of iWorks'09 and hate new versions and you do clean install your favourite software is gone. You may just as well erase your Time Machine disc and start backup from clean drive. I didn't do it.
2) Make copies of your mails.
3) If you purchased software outside AppStore make notes of serial codes. Mail backup helps.
4) When making USB drive bootable do it this way: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=18081307&postcount=3 it preserves RECOVERY partition which is needed for FIND MY MAC option and it is usefull to have it anyway. Place the USB intended for clean install directly into your MAC, don't use USB hub.
5) Migration assistant never worked for me. The reason might have been that my last full Time Machine backup was done 18 months ago, and it was 10.8... I have read quite a lot about getting restore from the Time Machine, and dwelled on the subject myself.
I can't give explanation why that happened but that is found out the hard way:
- I discoverd that long name of the user should be different than the one you used before clean install.
- After doing trial and error attempts I made short user name the same as in my user before clean install, and started it with a capital letter. Why? That gave me access to my time machine. When the I had a different short user name than stored in time machine then upon entry into time machine all the backups well dimed and going back was not possible. With the same short name the backups were accessible. The system complained that I had no permissions to access the folders. But that is possible to change. When you look up Time Machine folders in Finder, those that are restricted to you have got red circle with a white line inside. Ctrl click on the restricted folder and select Get info. Add yourself as a user that has the access and change permissions to read and write. Your Documents folder appear in every back up in Time Machine. The best it is to change the permissions in the latest backup.
At the end of the day I managed to recover my mail. Data from other programs and my old MBP is up runnning again and faster. It takes however, a lot of work to make it.
The biggest pitty is that I lost my Pages v4.3 and now don't have an option to recover it.

Are you sure its not shown? It should have a yellow or green icon, and list the name of the system and HD that was backed-up, not the one it's on.
If not, try to repair the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Clean install and time machine

I'd like to reformat my hard drive and do a clean install of leopard. I've backed up my drive with time machine and I'm wondering if it is possible to recover all my third party applications etc etc including passwords and settings without having to reinstall them all from the original discs?

Hello Jacob,
All of these are good questions to have when erasing and installing OS X Yosemite. To answer your first question you would need to boot to either your Recovery HD or through the Recovery USB and follow the steps in the first article below. Either option will get the task accomplished and will install OS X Yosemite. For your final question about restoring from a Time Machine back up, you will see the option to restore when going through the setup process of your Mac. Let me know if the information below is of help or need further assistance.
OS X Yosemite: Erase and reinstall OS X
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18869
OS X: About Recovery Disk Assistant
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202294
OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18848
Take it easy,
-Norm G.

I'd like to use iPhoto '09 with Lion. Tried to install from time machine back-up no go. Tried to install from iLife '09 DVD no go.

I'd like to run iPhoto '09 on Lion. Tried to install on Lion from Time Machine backup. Got message iPhoto won't work because of a missing Library file. Tried to install iPhoto '09 from iLife '09 DVD. Got message that it cannot be installed on my system. iMovie runs previous versions and iTunes runs previous versions.
Why can't iPhoto run on Lion? My wife has over 10,000 photos in her library and she's taken the time to sort them into folders. I've recovered the library with the folder sort but have to use it on an external drive with a Snow Leopard system on it. The latest iPhoto ('11) has no provision for organizing into folders. I'd really like to have everything in one place with one OS (Lion) and two iPhoto apps '09 and '11 and I suppose 2 photo libraries. I've been trying to resolve this ever since iPhoto '11 came out and I installed it. I can't begin to tell you how difficult it is to answer the question " Where are my folders?" brian25

I tried to check the Library setup on iMovie and iTunes. The iMovie Libraries seem to be part of the applications and my iTunes applications have become Russian so I have another problem. I tried to install iPhoto '09 again from my iLife '09 disk. When I selected "Custom Install" to load iPhoto only, the box I got said " A later version of this application is already installed" The iPhoto item which I would choose for a custom install says "skip". Yesterday I ignored this and went on with an install. The final screen said "Installation Successful" There was no iPhoto '09 on my hard drive. As far as I can tell, you cannot load iPhoto '09 from a Time Machine backup. There is no Lion compatable iPhoto '09 in the App store, and iPhoto '09 will not install onto Lion from the iLife '09 disk.I don't understand exactly what you mean by "load my backup and convert again" Do you mean go to the app store and access my purchases and re- download iPhoto '11 and reinstall it and re-convert my iPhoto library? I suppose what I should have done originally was to duplicate my iPhoto '09 library and put it on an external drive for safekeeping. Who knew it wouldn't install on Lion from Time Machine? When I downloaded iPhoto '!! from the app store I should have duplicated it and saved a copy to an external hard drive for safekeeping and then proceeded with installing iPhoto '11 on my hard drive.I suppose when the Thunderbolt concept is fully realized and monster Thunderbolt external droves are in common use this will seem a lot easier. I have rebuilt my iPhoto '09 library and have it on a hard disk that has a bootable copy of Snow Leopard and a working copy of iPhoto '09 also. I think you are telling me to reinstall iPhoto '11 on my internal hard drive and reconvert the iPhoto library used by iPhoto '11. Right? brian25

Mountain lion will not install because time machine uses hard drive for back up. What should I do?

I have downloaded Mountain Lion but it will not allow me to install because the time machine uses the hard drive to back up. How do I solve this problem?

Unless you are trying to install on an external hard drive that actually has been used for Time Machine backups, this is usually caused by having a folder named "Backups.backupd" on your hard drive somewhere. It may be at the root level of the hard drive, but may also be elsewhere. Try searching for it, and then delete it. (You shouldn't need it.)

Clean Lion install, keeping Time Machine history?

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