Getting Time Machine files onto another Mac

I have backed up one of my Macs with Time Machine, but that Mac has failed and I need to get some files from that backup hard drive onto another one of my Macs. Is there an easy way of doing this? (When introducing an external hard drive to a new/different Mac in the past they always had to be initialized, which wiped the hard drive.)
Many thanks

yes, connect the TM drive to another mac, control-click on TM in the dock and choose "browse other TM disks". this will let you browse those backups and restore what you want where you want to.
you can also run Migration Assistant to import all users and user data from the TM backup onto the other mac but this may be more than you need.

Similar Messages

How do I copy by time machine files to another external HD?

I would like to copy the data I have in my time machine to another external HD so that I have two backups; one I can store offsight and one I can have connected to my computer. Can this be done and if so, how does one do it?

My time machine has files going back to May 2011 and contains over 500GB; my computer has only 320GB capacity. I would like to set up another external HD with the time Machine files on it so that I can use both backups alternately storing one off site and one connected to my computer. After a couple weeks then alternate them so I always a backup offsite; thus having two HD containing my time machine files.

Access my Time Machine backup with another Mac?

The HD on my 24" iMac just bit the dust and I am using my old eMac to try to get some work done while I wait for another. Fortunately, I have a Time Machine backup. Is it okay to access files off my Time Machine backup with my eMac, as long as I don't change anything? I don't want to mess up my backup before I can restore it to my new Mac.
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Should be, if the eMac is running 10.5.x be sure to turn off TM backups though.

How to Move a Shared Time Machine disk to another Mac?

Hi,
I have a network with three macs. Initially, I had a Time Machine disk connected via USB to Mac A. Mac A and Mac B used that disk for TM backups.
Now I have coupled the Time Machine disk (via Firewire if that matters) to Mac C.
Mac B can't find the Time Machine disk anymore (as well as Mac A I guess), although the TM disk itself has still the same name. When I explicitly open the TM disk on Mac C in the Finder on Mac B, Mac B does not recognise it as its original TM disk.
After I clicked Change Disk in the Time Machine preferences on Mac B, I was able to reselect the TM disk. However, it doesn't see that there is already a long history present from Mac B and Time Machine plans to back up from scratch.
How can I tell Mac A and Mac B that the TM disk that is now connected to Mac C is still the same disk?
Thanks a lot for your help.

I want to do the same thing but i have a BW database (SAP) and i want to move the datafile form one mount poitn to another due to space constraint, but i want to use BR*TOOLS utility to do this, so can anyone help me out on this on how to do this, what are the precaution need to be undertaken.
Jafar

Restore Time Machine backup to another Mac

If I use time machine to backup my Macbook Pro to an external hard drive, then lose my Macbook Pro, can I restore my data to another Mac? Does anyone know the answer

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html
But every indication is that simply starting off the Leopard disk will ask you, if the device (backup) is hooked to the computer.

How to fix podcast privileges when using time machine backup on another mac

hello,
my imac broke down the other day and is now at the menders. i had been using time machine with a LaCie 500gb external hard drive.
i am now using my macbook pro as a substitute and want to use the itunes library from my LaCie instead of copying everything over again. I have managed to achieve this by changing the library destination in itunes preferences. However, when i try to "get" the latest podcasts that usually subscribe to, it says "you do not have enough access privileges for this operation". similarly, when i try to buy anything from the itunes store, it will not let me download, giving me an error 5000 message instead. i had signed in correctly by the way. the purchased songs are still in the downloads folder but greyed out.
any advise would be much appreciated. i'm not that technically minded so please spell anything out to me!

johndave, did anyone ever respond to your post?

Time Machine backup to another Mac on the network

Hi, my wife is getting a new iMac. I was wondering if I partitioned the new drive in the iMac, one for the iMac OS X installation & the other for backing up my MacBook Pro over the network. Would this work?
So it would be:
iMac backed up to exteral firewire drive
MacBook Pro backed up to second partition on iMac over local network
My network uses a 8 port gig switch & an Airport Extreme router.
Any ideas or help would be great, thanks.

Check out this article:
http://lowendmac.com/zisman/08az/time-machine-shared-backup.html

Restore my time machine data to another mac

I backed up my MBP on time machine, but need to restore it to my wife's mac while mine is being fixed. I have set up a user area on her MB. How do I restore my data from time machine to a her MB?
Thanks
Message was edited by: qsack

you can use Migration assistant (it's in Applications/Utilities) to do that.

Time machine backup to another mac

Hi,
Here's my config : I have a mini that has a drive attached locally for TM use. I use it to back up the mini, but also a MacBook. It works mostly fine. The only problem I have is that it seems that to backup my macbook I have to browse in the finder to the mini, and even to the TM drive, otherwise TM does not see the drive attached to the other mac.
Is TM so dumb he cannot remember a network location and try to connect to it ? Or maybe he tried when I was away from home (or after a sleep/restart), and decided to give up after a few attempts, awaiting manual mapping of the drive ?
Is this a bug ?

I also have a Mac Mini that I use as a "file server" for the house. The Mini uses TM to back up to one of its attached drives. I also have two laptop macs on the same home network and each uses TM to back up to a drive attached to the Mini. (I.e., The mini has three external, attached drives that are dedicated to each of the three Macs in the house.)
My laptop moves between home and work. At work I configure TM to back up to a portable, attached drive. When I get home, I reconfigure TM to use the remote drive on the Mini. However, to do this, I must first use Finder to reach the Mini and log in, thus getting the mounted drive to appear on the desktop. Then I select the Mini's volume (drive) that is used as the TM backup drive for the laptop. This is the only way I can get that drive to show up in TM's preferences "Change Disk" window in order to redefine the TM backup drive. TM doesn't "remember" that drive, since it can only remember one destination drive at a time.
HOWEVER, once I've defined the Mini's drive as the destination, I can eject the drive from the laptop's desktop. When TM does its hourly backup, it automatically connects to the sparsebundle file on the Mini's drive that is used as the destination. As long as I don't redefine the destination drive, TM finds the remote drive.

How can i view time capsule files on another mac

I am trying to look at files backed up to my Time Capsule. How do I do that?

Perhaps someone in the Time Capsule forum might know? Good luck.

Overly large time machine files

Hi There,
my disk that I use for Time machine (120GB Lacie USB) has recently become corrupted, so that it is currently 'read only' So I decided to copy my Time machine files to another drive, so I could format my main one, and then put them back. But this is proving harder that it looks. My temporary drive is a Lacie NAS (250GB), connected via a switch to my iMac, but I can't drag and drop the files as it wont let me.
So I used another backup program to make a copy, but when I got home from work it had copied 2 of the 49 folders, amounting to 150GB of data, but my main drive is only 120GB!!! How can Time Machine have created 49 (nearly) identical folders containing 90GB of data in each one on a 120GB drive?
And perhaps more importantly, how can I make a backup of my Time Machine files, so that once I have reformatted (or maybe replaced) my main drive I can copy them back and pick up where I left off.

Time Machine backup files cannot be copied in the normal way. TM uses hard links and what they call "multi-links" so as to keep only one copy of each unique version of each file.
For example, if you have a file called "MyFile", if you navigate to it in the backupdb in the Finder you will see it in every timed/dated TM backup folder, and "Get Info" will report the file's true size if restored, but you are really only seeing a hard link; the actual file data is stored invisibly in the backupdb, and the file data is retained as long as there is at least one (hard) link to it.
Apple has taken this technology one step further, and does the same with entire directories (folders).
Thus, the total amount of space used for a TM backupdb directory will be far less than the total of the "Get Info" reported size of all its dated folders.
SuperDuper! can clone a TM backupdb directory and maintain all these special links. There may now be other utilities which can do this, such as CCC, but I'm not sure which.
I'd suggest first using SuperDuper! to clone your corrupted read-only TM backup to a disk image stored elsewhere for safekeeping. If you want to be able to continue building upon your TM backup it will need to be retained with all its links intact.
Another consideration is that TM creates a backup on a NAS drive as a sparsebundle, essentially a "size-adjustable" disk image.
Once you have that clone of your TM backup disk as a SuperDuper! disk image you can then restore that disk image to your new TM backupdrive. If you then need to restore to a new or reformatted main drive you should then be able to do so from the restored TM backup.
Make sense?

I have a mid2009 MacBook Pro for which I have been using a USB WD HD for Time Machine. I'd like to get a wireless HD and start a new Time Machine backup for this Mac and retire the 5 year old WD drive. Can I start over?

I have a mid2009 MacBook Pro running Mavericks for which I have been using a USB WD HD for Time Machine. I'd like to get a wireless HD and start a new Time Machine backup for this Mac and retire the 5 year old WD drive. Can I start over?

no archive/ backup is perfect, HD clones can be set to make incremental additions, same as time machine however, though they are more time involved in doing so.
See the + and - of all data backup/ archives below and "spread it around".... or the "dont put your eggs all in one basket" philosophy.
Peace
Data Storage Platforms; their Drawbacks & Advantages
#1. Time Machine / Time Capsule
Drawbacks:
1. Time Machine is not bootable, if your internal drive fails, you cannot access files or boot from TM directly from the dead computer.
2. Time machine is controlled by complex software, and while you can delve into the TM backup database for specific file(s) extraction, this is not ideal or desirable.
3. Time machine can and does have the potential for many error codes in which data corruption can occur and your important backup files may not be saved correctly, at all, or even damaged. This extra link of failure in placing software between your data and its recovery is a point of risk and failure. A HD clone is not subject to these errors.
4. Time machine mirrors your internal HD, in which cases of data corruption, this corruption can immediately spread to the backup as the two are linked. TM is perpetually connected (or often) to your computer, and corruption spread to corruption, without isolation, which TM lacks (usually), migrating errors or corruption is either automatic or extremely easy to unwittingly do.
5. Time Machine does not keep endless copies of changed or deleted data, and you are often not notified when it deletes them; likewise you may accidently delete files off your computer and this accident is mirrored on TM.
6. Restoring from TM is quite time intensive.
7. TM is a backup and not a data archive, and therefore by definition a low-level security of vital/important data.
8. TM working premise is a “black box” backup of OS, APPS, settings, and vital data that nearly 100% of users never verify until an emergency hits or their computers internal SSD or HD that is corrupt or dead and this is an extremely bad working premise on vital data.
9. Given that data created and stored is growing exponentially, the fact that TM operates as a “store-it-all” backup nexus makes TM inherently incapable to easily backup massive amounts of data, nor is doing so a good idea.
10. TM working premise is a backup of a users system and active working data, and NOT massive amounts of static data, yet most users never take this into consideration, making TM a high-risk locus of data “bloat”.
11. In the case of Time Capsule, wifi data storage is a less than ideal premise given possible wireless data corruption.
12. TM like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
13. *Level-1 security of your vital data.
Advantages:
1. TM is very easy to use either in automatic mode or in 1-click backups.
2. TM is a perfect novice level simplex backup single-layer security save against internal HD failure or corruption.
3. TM can easily provide a seamless no-gap policy of active data that is often not easily capable in HD clones or HD archives (only if the user is lazy is making data saves).
#2. HD archives
Drawbacks:
1. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
2. Unless the user ritually copies working active data to HD external archives, then there is a time-gap of potential missing data; as such users must be proactive in archiving data that is being worked on or recently saved or created.
Advantages:
1. Fills the gap left in a week or 2-week-old HD clone, as an example.
2. Simplex no-software data storage that is isolated and autonomous from the computer (in most cases).
3. HD archives are the best idealized storage source for storing huge and multi-terabytes of data.
4. Best-idealized 1st platform redundancy for data protection.
5. *Perfect primary tier and level-2 security of your vital data.
#3. HD clones (see below for full advantages / drawbacks)
Drawbacks:
1. HD clones can be incrementally updated to hourly or daily, however this is time consuming and HD clones are, often, a week or more old, in which case data between today and the most fresh HD clone can and would be lost (however this gap is filled by use of HD archives listed above or by a TM backup).
2. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
Advantages:
1. HD clones are the best, quickest way to get back to 100% full operation in mere seconds.
2. Once a HD clone is created, the creation software (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper) is no longer needed whatsoever, and unlike TM, which requires complex software for its operational transference of data, a HD clone is its own bootable entity.
3. HD clones are unconnected and isolated from recent corruption.
4. HD clones allow a “portable copy” of your computer that you can likewise connect to another same Mac and have all your APPS and data at hand, which is extremely useful.
5. Rather than, as many users do, thinking of a HD clone as a “complimentary backup” to the use of TM, a HD clone is superior to TM both in ease of returning to 100% quickly, and its autonomous nature; while each has its place, TM can and does fill the gap in, say, a 2 week old clone. As an analogy, the HD clone itself is the brick wall of protection, whereas TM can be thought of as the mortar, which will fill any cracks in data on a week, 2-week, or 1-month old HD clone.
6. Best-idealized 2nd platform redundancy for data protection, and 1st level for system restore of your computers internal HD. (Time machine being 2nd level for system restore of the computer’s internal HD).
7. *Level-2 security of your vital data.
HD cloning software options:
1. SuperDuper HD cloning software APP (free)
2. Carbon Copy Cloner APP (will copy the recovery partition as well)
3. Disk utility HD bootable clone.
#4. Online archives
Drawbacks:
1. Subject to server failure or due to non-payment of your hosting account, it can be suspended.
2. Subject, due to lack of security on your part, to being attacked and hacked/erased.
Advantages:
1. In case of house fire, etc. your data is safe.
2. In travels, and propagating files to friends and likewise, a mere link by email is all that is needed and no large media needs to be sent across the net.
3. Online archives are the perfect and best-idealized 3rd platform redundancy for data protection.
4. Supremely useful in data isolation from backups and local archives in being online and offsite for long-distance security in isolation.
5. *Level-1.5 security of your vital data.
#5. DVD professional archival media
Drawbacks:
1. DVD single-layer disks are limited to 4.7Gigabytes of data.
2. DVD media are, given rough handling, prone to scratches and light-degradation if not stored correctly.
Advantages:
1. Archival DVD professional blank media is rated for in excess of 100+ years.
2. DVD is not subject to mechanical breakdown.
3. DVD archival media is not subject to ferromagnetic degradation.
4. DVD archival media correctly sleeved and stored is currently a supreme storage method of archiving vital data.
5. DVD media is once written and therefore free of data corruption if the write is correct.
6. DVD media is the perfect ideal for “freezing” and isolating old copies of data for reference in case newer generations of data become corrupted and an older copy is needed to revert to.
7. Best-idealized 4th platform redundancy for data protection.
8. *Level-3 (highest) security of your vital data.
[*Level-4 data security under development as once-written metallic plates and synthetic sapphire and likewise ultra-long-term data storage]
#6. Cloud based storage
Drawbacks:
1. Cloud storage can only be quasi-possessed.
2. No genuine true security and privacy of data.
3. Should never be considered for vital data storage or especially long-term.
4. *Level-0 security of your vital data.
Advantages:
1. Quick, easy and cheap storage location for simplex files for transfer to keep on hand and yet off the computer.
2. Easy source for small-file data sharing.

I cannot get time machine (with airport) to back up my mac. It worked previously but not now. It is working on my macbook. the message i get is "Time Machine couldn't back up to '(airport network name)'"

I cannot get time machine (with airport) to back up my mac. It worked previously but not now. It is working on my macbook. the message i get is "Time Machine couldn't back up to '(airport network name)'" Any help is appreciated.

OS is important.. What OS is on Mac and what is on the working macbook?
Was the Airport setup from the Macbook? That might be why it works from there..
Does the AE show up in Mac airport utility?
Can you mount the disk in finder and copy files to it/from it??
Did you try a TM reset after mounting in Finder.. so you know it is available?
What about a network reboot.. does it work post a restart for a few minutes/hours/days???

My time machine backup external hard drive has failed. I have a newer external drive already connected to my MAC but can't figure out how to get Time Machine to set up on it?

My time machine backup external hard drive has failed. I have a newer external drive already connected to my MAC but can't figure out how to get Time Machine to set up on it

http://pondini.org/TM/21.html

I used migration assn't to load a Time Machine backup onto a new mac. The first TM backup after that took some time, perhaps not surprising. But the backups thereafter have all taken hours, with huge amounts of "indexing" time. Time to reload TM?

I used migration assn't to load a Time Machine backup onto a new mac. The first TM backup after that took some time, perhaps not surprising. But the backups thereafter have all taken hours, with huge amounts of "indexing" time. Time to reload TM?

Does every backup require lots of indexing? If so, the index may be damaged.
Try Repairing the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If that doesn't help, see the pink box in #D2 of the same link.

Getting Time Machine files onto another Mac

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