How to use Time Machine before and after installing a new hard drive

So basically I'm buying a new hard drive for my Macbook pro and I have a lot of files on my computer that I would like to save. I have never used Time Machine before so I need help on how to set it up before AND after installing the harddrive so my files get transferred onto the new hard drive. Thanks in advance

wjosten wrote:
Me, I would never use Time Machine to do this. What I'd suggest you do is get an exterior enclosure for your new drive. Then use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone your existing drive to your new drive. Once done, verify your clone is bootable & all of your data present. Then swap drives & use your old drive for Time Machine backups(after erasing it). Then get another drive & exterior enclosure to regularly clone your new drive to.
Unless he was swapping for a lower capacity HDD or to a lower capacity SSD, then the old drive would make a lousy Time Machine disk.  However, whenever I swap out a disk I do exactly what you do.  CCC to get the ol drive onto a new one.  Test by starting up to the new (but still external drive).  Then replace the internal drive.
I usually just sell the old drive on eBay.  My Time Machine backup is always 2X the size of the internal drive, which I believe is a bit above recommendations, but works for me.  The price of large external drives is almost the same as smaller internal ones.

Similar Messages

  • I just backed up my mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine. What would happen if I turn Time Machine off and then plug the external hard drive back into my computer?

    I just backed up my mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine. What would happen if I turn Time Machine off and then plug the external hard drive back into my computer?
    What I am ultimately wanting to do is make more room on my computer by backing up all of my files onto the external hard drive and then deleting them off of my computer. However, neededing to be able to retrieve them from the external hard drive later down the road.
    From what I have read and am trying to understand, is that I probably shouldn't have used time machine. I need to use the external hard drive like a basic flash drive where I can put things on and get things off without having it automatically update through time machine everytime I connect it to my computer.
    Not tech savvy at all and barely understand basics. I need very simple and easy to understand explanations.

    sydababy wrote:
    and then deleting them off of my computer.
    BIG BIG MISTAKE ..... youre making a linchpin deathtrap for your data trying to shove everything on a single fragile HD.
    Dont suffer the tragedy other people make, buy another or 2 more HD, theyre cheap as dust.
    The number of people who have experienced terror by having a single external HD backup is enormous.  One failure that WILL HAPPEN, and kaput,......all gone!
    Dont do it, its all about redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.
    follow here:
    Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
    Deleting them off your computer is fine....having only ONE copy is extremely BAD.
    The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be
    Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and squirreled away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.
    Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.
    Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.
    Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret.

  • Is it possible to use an external hard drive for time machine backup and also as a regular hard drive?

    Is it possible to use an external hard drive for time machine backup and also as a regular hard drive?

    I am using an external drive in the exact way that you described. You just keep it plugged in to the computer when you want to access the movies and files. In order to put files on it, just go to finder open up the drive under devices and drag and drop files onto the drive. It is just like using a usb drive with a terabyte of space.

  • I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?

    I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?

    Hello Drake, I suspect one or more of the Drives needs repairing, but...
    Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
    http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
    http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
    Can't imaging something not being covered there.

  • I cannot access an older time machine backup after installing an new hard drive.

    After installing a new hard drive I tried to access my older backups in time machine but cannot. They are there but do not light up and allow me to access them, or select them.

    First, if you're worried about the possibility of losing a backup set, then your backup strategy is inadequate. You will certainly lose those backups, no matter what you do, when the drive hosting them fails, as it will eventually. If you take data safety seriously, you should have at least two complete, independent backups of all your data, one of which is off-site at all times. I suggest you make a second backup now, before doing anything else.
    The action I suggested won't delete all the snapshots; only the selected one -- unless something goes wrong, which is always possible. Without adequate backups, nothing you do is safe.

  • HT1335 My computer crashed and we installed a new hard drive.  How do I sync my I pod nano 6th generation?  Will I lose everything I have on the Ipod ?

    My computer crashed and we installed a new hard drive.  How do I reinstall I tunes and sync my Ipod Nano 6th generation?  Will
    I lose everything I have on it?

    If you don't have the prior computer backup files, you may want to look at this to get your information from the phone:
    http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/index.php

  • What to do after installing a new hard drive on inspiron 1525

    after installing a new hard drive on my inspiron 1525 I place the drivevers and utilities driver on the cd/dvd player drive, chose boot from cd/dvd drive, and I get this message
    your cd/dvd drive during this boot cycle is f:
    a RAMDISK drive is available for this boot cycle as C:
    it contains several hard drive setup tools. Please use these tools only under the direction of dell support staff.
    F:\>
    What do i enter after F:\>        ?????????
    <ADMIN NOTE : Email Id removed per Privacy policy>

    Hello Warren,
    To understand the issue and help you further, I would request you to help me with few details about the issue.
    -- What exactly is happening when you turn on the computer?
    -- Do you see a black screen with a blinking cursor?
    -- What is the Operating System?
    -- What is the System Model?
    Run a hardware diagnostics to check if there is any hardware failure.
    -- Restart the computer.
    -- Keep tapping F12 key on the Dell Logo screen.
    -- From One Time Boot Menu, select Diagnostics and press Enter.
    -- If the test fails please capture the Error Code and write back to us would be glad to assist with the next course of action.

  • I see that i have a problem after installing my new hard drive on my macbook pro mid 2009 version. I put a new hard drive, with all of my information from my old drive installed on it, into the computer. but now have the blinking question mark folder

    i see that i have a problem after installing my new hard drive on my macbook pro mid 2009 version. I put a new hard drive, with all of my information from my old drive installed on it, into the computer. but now have the blinking question mark folder. I see that it means that it isn't reading the new hard drive.
    did i miss a step between transferring all of my information from my old hard drive to the new hard drive and installing the new hard drive into the computer. I believe that i installed properly. it was quite easy.
    thanks for your help

    It means there is no bootable system on the drive. If you still have access to the old drive, then I suggest you boot from it then clone it to the new internal drive. Use OPTION boot to boot from the Recovery HD on the old drive:
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
    Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
         1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue
             button.
         2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
         3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
         4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it
             to the Destination entry field.
         5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
             the Source entry field.
         6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
    Source means the external old drive. Destination means the new internal drive.

  • After installing a new hard drive can I install snow leopard directly from snow leopard disc

    After installing a new hard drive can I install snow leopard directly from snow leopard disc. Or do I have to install previous versions first. iMac 7.1 (2007) 2.8ghz

    You can install directly, assuming the disk is newer than your computer and not designed for a different Mac, but doing so won't install iLife.
    (64305)

  • How to stop Time Machine backing up on a specific external hard drive?

    I work on a iMac 2.66 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, with Mac OS X 10.6.8. I use two external hard drives that are the exact same model, 2 TB WD My Book 1110 Media: one is intended for back-up, the other for storing video editing files. They're both connected through USB 2.0.
    I set the "back-up" hard drive as back-up disk for Time Machine, through the Time Machine preferences. Now, everytime I connect the "video" hard drive, Time Machine recognizes it as a back-up disk, and starts backing up on it. I could delete the "Backups.backupdb" file that Time Machine had created by connecting the "video" hard drive to another Mac and moving it to the Trash, but as soon as I reconnect the "video" hard drive to my iMac, Time Machine backs up on it again.
    Is there a way to "de-select" a hard drive from Time Machine's list of back-up disks?
    Note: I should mention another thing that might indicate a conflict. When both hard drives "back-up" and "video" are connected to my iMac, if I open Final Cut Pro X, I can only see my "back-up" hard drive. To access the files I am working on, I need to eject the "back-up" hard drive, and suddenly the "video" drive appears.
    If you have any idea of how to solve this conflict... I am a bit lost.
    Thank you!

    Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
    Give them unique volume names using Disk Utility.
    Then set Time Machine back up to that unique volume name.
    For example, I regularly use 4 external drives (though they're not all the same model).
    The descriptions quickly tell me which drives I have connected to my MacBook when open Finder:
    My Time Machine backup volume is named 'Time Machine 1TB'.
    My iPhoto backup volume is named 'iPhoto Backup 320GB'
    My iTunes backup volume is named 'iTunes Backup 120GB'
    and the last is 'Windows 7 Backup 250Gb' but since it's a Windows volume, it is formatted NTFS.
    This likely means that you will have to erase and repartition one of your drives to name it.
    You MIGHT be able to rename it using Finder, right-clicking on the volume, and selecting Rename (current volume name).
    WARNING: I can't be certain of what just renaming it that way could screw up in the way of permissions and file links.
    Within Disk Utility, it seems it is absolutely not possible to change a volume name without clicking the Partition tab, and that involves erasing.
    Given the choice, I'd probably choose to rename (erase and repartition) the Time Machine drive. A current backup or two on Time Machine, and I'm good. I don't really need to go 'way back' to recover files, because I really don't ever erase anything. I just keep buying bigger drives!
    And I still burn the 'absolutely critical, priceless, can't ever be without this stuff' files to DVD or CD at least monthly or quarterly, in case one of my TM or backup drives fails at the same time as my primary hard drive. Call me paranoid, but I worked in Information Technology for many years: Murphy was an optimist!
    Message was edited by: kostby

  • How to change computer user name after installing a new hard drive on my computer. HELP

    TO WHOMEVER CAN HELP ME: 
    How do I change my computer user name after HP installed a new hard drive on my computer.  Now it is called TEST??  So on my C drive instead of saying my name it says TEST.  Please help???
    Thanks in advance for any help I can get.
    Christina   

    Hi, Christina:
    Go to the control panel and then to user accounts. Select the Change Your Account Name option. Change the account name from Test to Christina.
    That should do it for you.
    Paul

  • How do I put content from my iphone back into itunes after installing a new hard drive?

    How do I put content from my iphone back into itunes after I have installed a new hard drive on my computer?

    See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
    tt2

  • What do I need to do after installing a new hard drive?

    I had a 13" Non-retina MacBook Pro from mid-2012 and I bought it standard, but I upgraded my RAM from 4GB to 8GB, but also while on this website that I bought the RAM modules from, I noticed they sell Solid State Drives and I would have gotten one, but I wanted to upgrade it later on as I didn't have $500 for the 512GB flash drive for it. I need something with storage and 500GB is plenty, but I found a 960GB SSD for $500 on this website. Its a very good website for upgrades for all computers. So my question is, when I install this new hard drive, can I just hold Command+ R to install Mac OS X or do I need to go through a special process to get OS X on the new hard drive? I have an Apple Time Capsule so I have my data backed up and I'll just restore it from a backup. If I need a special cable to boot OS X to the new drive, then so be it.

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5210788?tstart=0
    At startup hold down the Command+Option/Alt+r keys until you see a globe on the screen. Then use disk utility to partition and format the drive HSF+ and then select Reinstall Mac OS X. whatever version of OS X that originally came on your system will be installed and then you can upgrade back to Mavericks.

  • If I can't find the start up disks, is there anyway to get iWork back after installing a new hard drive?

    I had to install a new hard drive because my orginal one crashed. When I bought my macbook, iWork came pre-installed. Now with a new hard drive I would like iWork back on my computer, but can't find the start up disks, assuming I'd be able to do it that way. Is there anyway I can contact Apple and have them give me the iWork software?
    (Overall, very upset about this since my macbook is only 2 years old and I lost everything. A friend of mine has been working on it for 3 weeks trying to recover some data.)

    - Did you restore from a backup that contained the photos?
    - The backup only contains photos in the iPod's Camera Roll album. It does not included photos synced to the iPod.
    - All you can do is try restoring from backup again.

  • Can I use Time Machine to back files on an External Hard Drive

    My MacBook Pro hard drive filled up with movies, pictures, and music, so I bought a 2TB Time Capsule.  I have a external hard drive that is about the same capacity as my MacBook hard drive. Sine the Time Capsule is by far the largest drive I have, I moved all my movies, music, and pictures to the Time Capsule and am using it as an external hard drive.  I attached a 500GB external hard drive to the Time Capsule and I use that as the backup drive for Time Machine. However, the problem I am encountering is that I can't seem to direct Time Machine to include all of my files on my Time Capsule in the back up on to the other external hard drive. 
    Can I use Time Machine to backup data that I store on my Time Capsule to a external hard drive?  If not, what is hte best method for backing up my files that are on my Time Capsule?
    Thanks,
    David

    You need to use a different utility .. eg CCC or Chronosync to backup from the TC to yet another drive.. the problem is, that drive should be connected to the computer.. if you use a USB drive on the TC.. the file copying will be slow as slow as you will not believe.. all files are copied to the computer, then back to the TC.. it cannot copy directly to the TC..
    As Neil said.. one way or another you need to use an external drive on the computer, even if you don't use it all the time.. the danger of course is not doing regular backups.. and forgetting their importance.
    A true NAS will have automated backup incrementally of the files stored.. The TC is not a NAS in that sense.. it is a backup target for TM above and beyond anything else.

Maybe you are looking for