I'm currently backing up using Time Machine and a Seagate external hard drive, how to do I restore on a new computer?

I hate to say it.. But I have never backed up!! I have thousands of pics of my son on this mac book, it got wet and NOW I'm backing up (as i type) to a Seagate external hard drive-  I plugged it in, and then Time MAchine launched automatically.  It looks like it's backing up my whole computer, is it backing up everything?  photos, address book, documents etc?  If my computer crashes tomorrow, how would I restore all of this information on a new computer?
Help, I'm computer iliterate- hence the reason I got a Mac (so easy to use).  I need reasurance that it will back up!  How do I continue to back up?  Leave the external hard drive plugged in?  I'm telling you I'm below the knowledge of "Backing Up a Mac for Dummies"

Time Machine makes a backup of the whole OS.X volume automatically, so you will have an exact copy of your hard disk in your Time Machine external disk. Also, Time Machine will make backups every hour, always that your Time Machine disk is connected. If you want more information, visit this site > http://pondini.org
To restore this in a new Mac, you have to use Migration Assistant. Just connect the Time Machine drive into the new computer, open Migration Assistant (it's in /Applications/Utilities) and follow the steps. You will be able to select what you want to transfer.
Also, if you have a brand-new Mac, you can do this during the initial setup. Setup Assistant will ask you to restore a backup, so connect the Time Machine disk and follow the steps

Similar Messages

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    Does your external hard drive have it's own power supply?  It should.
    Is your external hard drive formatted with the NTFS file system?  It won't work.
    It needs to be formatted either with Mac OS Extended or FAT32.
    (There are drivers available to add NTFS support to OS X but their quality is unknown, especially the "free" ones.)

  • Hallo ,why is it that when I delete a photo ,which is backed up by time machine and western digital external hard drive , that I am able to restore the photo okay but not the titles and descriptions . I have  a Macbook 4.1, mac osx 10.5.8 . Iphoto 7.1.5 ,

    QUESTION.
    Hallo , my question is ;whenever I delete a photo and restore it through Time machine and Western digital external hard drive , I am able to restore the photo but not the titles and descriptions . Western Digital inform me that it isn't their external hard drive problem and suggest that it is an Apple software problem ?
    I am using  a Macbook 4.1 , with Mac OSX 10.5.8 . I photo 7.1.5 , last modifie4d 01/05/2010 -universal . Should I be upgrading  Iphoto ?
    I hope that someone is able to help in this matter , as i have to restore 12000 photos !
    Thanking you in anticipation.
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    Hallo  Kieth ,
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  • Time Machine and SuperDuper on External Hard Drive?

    Hi!
    I really need a back up solution and after reading a lot of different articles and forums I think using Time Machine and SuperDuper may be the best option for me so I'm looking for advice:
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    Effie Darrow wrote:
    Should I partition an external hard drive and have part of the partition for Time Machine and part for my SuperDuper clone?
    imagine that drive croaks. both backups will be lost @ the same time ...
    If I do this how much space should I give to each partition (the computer is 250GB and I'm using about 90GB, I mostly deal with documents, photos and music, I don't have movies or many huge files on my computer)
    see this read about how much space you should give TM: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/1.html.
    as for a SD clone, the size of your startup disk will suffice.
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    see above
    and if the Time Machine partition becomes full as I assume it will in a few months if I understand correctly it will just start overwriting older back ups?
    deleting them, yes.
    I know the ideal might be to have an external hard drive dedicated to time machine and one dedicated to SuperDuper
    that would indeed be ideal.
    but to be honest I can't afford 2 hard drives at the moment
    USB drives are dirt cheap right now but stay away from WD drives.
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  • HT201250 can I back up two different Macs using time machine to the same external hard drive?

    I have a MacBook Pro and a Intel Power Mac Tower.  The Power Mac is backed up to a 4 TB external hard drive using Time Machine.  Can I also back up the MacBook Pro to the same 4TB hard drive using its time machine without altering any of the Power Macs backed up files on the 4TB hard drive?
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  • Can I use Time Machine wirelessly to an external hard drive other than Time Capsule?

    Since I already have a wireless router, I don't want to get Time Capsule.  And since this is a laptop, I would prefer the external device *not* being physically connected to my MacBook Pro.  Any suggestions on external hard drives and methods to accomplish this would be appreciated.
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    Hi
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  • Re Time Machine I have an external  hard drive with files I backed up manually over the past 2 years 1TB of memory. I am finally taking the leap to use Time machine to back everything.   will I have to reformat that drive, thus wiping my previous bac

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  • Is there any way to create a time machine backup to an external hard drive with content already on it?  I have a hard drive that i have used for pictures but when i try to run a backup it says i need to start from a blank drive. Can i get around it?

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  • I had to reformat my OSX 10.5.8 and i can't restore my emails from my time machine backup from an external hard drive - only the latest (post backup) time machine back ups are available to restore. Please can any help

    I had to reformat my OSX 10.5.8 and I can't restore my emails from my time machine backup from an external hard drive - only the latest (post backup) time machine back ups are available to restore. Please can any help? I can find the mail folder in my libraries, but the Restore Button is grayed out

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  • HT201250 How can I migrate a Time Machine backup from an external hard drive to a new TimeCapsuls?

    I just got a 2TB Time Capsule.  I want to migrate my time machine backups on an external hard drive to the new Time Capsule.  I have about 430Gb of files to back up; I don't want to wait 7-8 days for the backup, unless I have to.  I am using OS 10.7.5 (forget which cat that is).  I have mounted the TC drive as 10.0.1.1; I tried to drag and drop from old to "data" on TC, but I get the error "The volume is the wrong format for a backup."  Any ideas how I can move my old files to the new, and bypass creating a brand new backup file?
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    Rather than do that, which means starting over from scratch, losing all your edits, organisation and so on, why not simply use iPhoto Library Manager to revert the Library to the older version? Easier, less destructive.
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  • I threw out 24 time machine backups from an external hard drive into my desktop trash and now I can't empty my trash.

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    Since you didn't mention what type of error message you were seeing, I'm going to guess on what is happening.
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    I'm having a difficult time following, I understand English isn't your native language. You may have good luck with Google Translate.
    Also please read Pondini's Time Machine FAQs & Time Machine Troubleshooting.

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