Merging Backups from a cloned machine

I had been using Time Machine to back up my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive. When I bought my iMac, which I intend to use as my main machine, I used the Time Machine backups to clone it from the MacBook, changing the name of the new machine. I now have on the external hard drive two sets of backups under the two different machine names.
If I don't intend to backup the MacBook in future onto that external hard drive can I just move all the MacBook backups from its folder on the drive to the folder for the new machine? I've had a look at the Time Machine FAQs but couldn't make up my mind whether this would work.

RobbieSnr wrote:
I had been using Time Machine to back up my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive. When I bought my iMac, which I intend to use as my main machine, I used the Time Machine backups to clone it from the MacBook, changing the name of the new machine. I now have on the external hard drive two sets of backups under the two different machine names.
The +Computer name+ doesn't matter -- Time Machine keeps track of your Mac by a hardware identifier on the logic board. That's why you can change the +Computer name+ without triggering a new full backup.
If I don't intend to backup the MacBook in future onto that external hard drive can I just move all the MacBook backups from its folder on the drive to the folder for the new machine? I've had a look at the Time Machine FAQs but couldn't make up my mind whether this would work.
If you backed both Macs up to the same drive directly (by connecting it via USB or FireWire), the backups are mixed inside the Backups.backupdb folder. That is one "set" of backups, and you cannot copy part of it successfully. That's why we recommend partitioning a drive in such cases, so Time Machine has it's own, exclusive space for each Mac's backups. See #4 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
In theory, you could delete the backups of the new Mac (per #12 in the FAQ), then partition the drive, and back it up to the new partition.
But if it has ever been near full, you probably can't partition it now, since data is likely scattered all over it. There are some 3rd-party apps, such as iPartition, that may be able to move things around so you can partition it, but that will cost some $$, take a long time, and may not be entirely reliable.
Your best bet may be to get a new drive to back up the new Mac.

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I am unable to restore my backups from my Time Machine

MacBook Pro – My reformatted system that won't restore from my time machine - HELP PLEASE
I loaded Lion when it first came     out and all my troubles started. (It was the same on my 24” iMac).     Mail particularly hardly worked on either machine after loading up     Lion but that's another story and I wish I had never upgraded to      Lion.
I am now in China and took my     MacBook Pro with me
To avoid mail problems I     eventually used web-mail as all I saw was the coloured spinning     wheel all day long otherwise
Gradually the machine got slower     and slower and I saw that coloured wheel more and more
Eventually a message came up to     say my Bootable Drive was almost full.
I checked and it wasn't full of MY     documents. I see on this forum it's an Apple problem - reformatting and restoring user files will not help the problem
On 1st November I did a     Time Machine backup that completed OK
Since then I had removed ALL     documents safely to my Sony Vaio that we bought instead of another     Apple Mac.
Despite removing ALL documents and      emptying the trash for two users the HDD continued to fill up     rapidly
I decided to do one more last     backup on Time Machine so I could reformat the system – This     backup never completed
I had to reformat the system as it     was totally not useable by now
I had expected to put a Snow     Leopard DVD in and restore my system without any problem - I have done this before on my iMac
I was unable to point the restore     to my time machine as it has a WD lock partition and Apple restores     don't recognise the drive may be locked!
No problem I thought, as I will do     it later through the tools utility called Migration Assistant
I have tried several times with     Leopard and Snow Leopard but cannot get the utility to work, as it     is obviously picking up the corrupt “LAST” backup (This is a shortcut to the 6th November uncompleted backup
I tried to move the 1st November one to the last and move the other out as “”Corrupt”,     but we are not allowed to change time machine files. Brilliant idea     but Apple stopped it!
So, I loaded Snow Leopard and got     it to see my Time Machine Files and restored first the Applications     – No problem
Then Library – This failed as     “You haven't permission” - What! Why? This is MY Laptop and MY     files. Apple have to sort out this permission problem. I have had     it three and a half years and it has driven me mad. It's a flawed     way of working in my opinion. It took me three years to empty the     trash because of it.
I then tried to restore the "System" folder which also has a library folder and that failed the same - Why     doesn't Time Machine restore what it's told to? Is it because I     called the MacBook Pro something different? It saw the backup     files OK and gave me the option of the previous MacBook or my iMac     that I also had on the same drive. I chose the MacBook but it would     NOT restore the system.
Conclusion
So, I am stuck in China without my     MacBook Pro and unable to restore my system and unable to retrieve     the 1st November backup which was taken properly.
This means that I cannot run any     programmes and do any work
I have wasted two weeks altogether     on all the combined problems and without a usable system
Any ideas how to restore back to     the 1st November please? Thanks in advance!

UpdateAfter Advice from Apple
RESTOREPROBLEMS
I spoke from China on the1st December to a very helpful Senior Apple Technical person. He gave me my guidelines for a successful restore and we hung up.
Unfortunately, the backup hadn't enough space, so I repartitioned the hard drive and THEN followed his instructions.
At 6 am there was amessage to say it had restored OK (See screen-shot to say it wassuccessful) and so, I pressed OK to restart the MacBook Pro.
All I got was the same as before - a grey spinning wheel.
To cut a very long storyshort, I wasted the whole day trying to make a backup work to no avail. I came to the conclusion that this is yet another example of Lion not working, as I have never had this problem with Leopard and Snow Leopard.
I then got a screen shot of a message never seen before and that may help Apple ….
So, I sent them that screen-shot. Restarting did nothing of course.
Timeto stop the nonsense!
To cut my losses of many days wasted time over the last 5 weeks, I gave up trying to restore and as I have all the data safely tucked away on an external drive, Irebuilt the MacBook Pro with just Leopard.
I then put all theApplications back on one by one and it runs perfectly. Luckily I also had these with me in China!
Ablisteringly quick system on the old Leopard
In fact, Pages and AdobeCS4 are how they were when we purchased the machine 3.5 years ago -Blisteringly quick.
I have a mega large Pages Newsletter about China that I think was over 20 Mb before I shrank it, as it had many photos. This brought the MacBook running Lion to it's knees. On my rebuilt MacBook Pro running Leopard, it ran blisteringly quickly,even before shrinking it.
I managed to finish thenewsletter that I had started on the 21st October and we bulk emailedit out as a PDF 1st December from my MacBook Pro running Leopard.
In fact, the machine isrunning so well, that I think I will stick with Leopard.
LION
I always suspected the problem with Lion was it was constantly doing SAVES all the time that were in the foreground and not the background that I was unable to type in productively. My own opinion is that the developers had been trying to be TOO clever with Lion and for a busy person like me it crippled my productivity that went down by 50% and then eventually to ZERO %.
CONCLUSION
I would like to thank the Apple Technical person for his efforts on my behalf and felt that he should receive this update to close the case.
I stated that hopefully he can pass my observations to the LION TEAM Management or to whoever in Apple needs to see this feedback. The dozen or so problems with Lion have already caused us to go and buy a Sony Vaio instead of another MacBook Pro.
This anti-Apple attitude is by a person that for over 3 years was utterly and completely soldon Apple. No more, as Lion killed all my enthusiasm for Apple. My colleague as well. I asked the Apple Technical person to PLEASE pass this on! Whether he passed the report on I will never know!

How do I replace my software with a backup from my Time Machine?

I keep losing my cursor when I come back from sleep mode, so I am unable to shut down the computer, am forced to crash by holding down the Power Button.The apple store said my hardware is fine, so I might have to reinstall all my software and thus replace my system with a backup version from my TIme Machine. I'm not sure how to proceed with this at home.

Suggest that you take a look at the excellent resource provided by Time Capule / Time Machine guru Pondini.
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html
See # 14
If you are not comfortable with this,I would also suggest that you consider havng a qualified Apple repair shop perform this for you.

HT4500 The Genius Bar wiped my hard drive (10.7.2) and I have since been unable to restored the backup from my Time Machine

I followed these steps from this article;
In Finder, press Command-Shift-U.
Double-click Migration Assistant.
Click "Continue" and enter an administrator name and password when prompted.
Select the "From a Time Machine backup or other disk" option, then click "Continue".
Select your Time Machine backup disk or Time Capsule (enter the user name and or password if prompted), then click "Continue".
Having selected the correct disk nothing happened, other than the word "connecting" appeared. After some time this also appeared. "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Ross Backup Data/Ross’s iMac.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1)". I tried both with the Time achine connected wirelessly and via Ethernet, with the same result.
Select the Time Machine backup you would like to restore (such the most current one you just made), then click "Continue".
Select Items to Migrate, then click "Continue". Note: The "Continue" button will be dimmed until the "Calculating…" stage is complete.
Any ideas please?

How big is your Time Machine image? If it's really big (eg, several hundred gigs), it can take a lot of time to calculate the time needed to restore it onto your Mac. This said, I'm still on SL, so maybe you have to reinstall Lion from the restore partition first, then migrate your personal stuff from the Time Machine image.
Additionally, you'd be better served if you posted this thread in the Lion part of the forum...

Using Rescue and Recovery to make backups from 3 different machines

Hello, I have three Thinkpad laptops, T400, X61 and R61i. I want to back up them using one external HD. The HD is divided into three partitions, the smallest for X61, the medium for R61i and the largest - for T400. I backed up all my laptops into the proper partitions (base backups), but now, then I want to make partial backups, they all are going to the largest partition (intended for T400). Is it possible (and how) to cause R&R to always use the same partition for each laptop while backing up it?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Please read the following post:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/Rescue-and-Recovery-backup-partition-second-ha...
From this post:
(1) Learn how to change security/options to peak inside the RRbackups folder
(2) The conclusion
outside of an existing RNR folder, For a NEW create RRbackups folder, it will choose the partition with the MOST FREE space.
===
I will offer some commentary and match it to what you are seeing.
(1) What release of RNR are on the 3 machines? same release? The newer RNR (been like this for a while), uses the UUID to separate backups within the SAME backup folder.
(2) for the C drive hdd, you CAN select another partition on the C drive hdd to hold the rrbackups folder, from the Advanced menu parms. This option is NOT available for second HDD.
(3) You will always have a RRbackups folder on the C drive. If you uninstall RNR, the C drive RRbackups is deleted. ***** Any RRbackups on external hdd will remain***
(4) What you want to do will not work. RNR is expecting one RNR backups folder on the external hdd, thus implying only one backups folder. From RNR windows, view backups will ONLY show backups that match the UUID of the machine RNR is running on. If you run RNR standalone, you can go to the restore panel and check the "show all backups from all machines" options. This should show all 3 of your machines backups. There is no advantage to have 3 partitiions for 3 backup folder. Sounds nice, wont work.
===
I will walk you thru a basic how it works on your end. Correct me if you see something else.
(1) external HDD
part 1. small.
part 2. medium
part 3. large
All new partitions. All empty. Back up large machine, it will chose part 3, create RNR backups folder, Take a FULL base backup. It will store the backup location in the C \RRbackups and the registry. This entry in the folder is named 0. It should be roughly 1/2 the size of the Large machine C drive. Lets say 39 GB. Run the next run. This is an incremental backup (your term = partial). This entry is named 1, and will be 2 GB., etc.
You uninstall RNR. Reinstall, change location to Second. Run a backup. This will be an incremental backup (2) and will continue where it left off. (ie, it should find the old folder with uuid inside).
(2) the mess
You backup medium computer. It will find the part3 RNR backups but no matching UUID. humm.. Will it use folder on part3 or choose a largest free space partition, like part 2. You will have to test. I would vote for part 3.
===
In summary:
I believe RNR is designed for only 1 rrbackups folder on an external HDD, regardless of the number of partitions. You seem to indicate you have 3 RRbackups folders on 3 partitions. Look inside each folder. It might be just using part3 for all your backups and you just dont see it. (ie, were you using part 1 for small machine, took a backup, then added part 2 and part 3, etc). This might work. Small machine is locked in on small part 1. Large is locked in on part3. But if you uninstall RNR on small machine, reinstall, take backup. hum. It will probably switch over to part 3. or find part 1.
This is risk and time you do not need to take. You want a solid plan that works. Based on this mess, I think RNR folks decided to design only 1 RNR backups folder on external.

Why can't i login on my mac book pro after restoring a backup from a time machine?

i had the apple store restore my macbook pro, late 2008 edition, from my external drive (time machine backup) after an unknown failure and now my passwords aren't working for any of my profiles. why? how can i get around it?

I'm not certain but I think Airplay is a non-secure protocol.
So if someone wrote a program to intercept Airplay they could potentially make a copy of that encrypted DVD you are trying to Airplay, albeit with compression and other compromises.
AC

Can I choose which backup for Time Machine to use if I have backups from two macs on one drive?

I have Time Machine backup on an external drive. I want to mirgrate all my files onto the new Mac Pro but migration is getting hung up and cant find the drive. Can I set up Time Machine for the new mac on this same drive and then select the old macs backup from within Time Machine?

Most likely, some folders were excluded from your backups as the result of a failed or aborted software installation.
Starting from a clean installation of OS X, set up a new administrator account and log in. Enter Time Machine and press the key combination shift-command-C. The front window will show all mounted volumes. All snapshots should now be accessible.* Select the one you want and navigate to your home folder (in the Users folder at the top level of the old startup volume.)
You should now be able to restore your user data. I suggest you do this in two stages. Quit all applications except the Finder before you begin.
Restore all the visible items at the top level of your home folder.
Hold down the option key and select Go ▹ Library from the Finder menu bar. Enter Time Machine and restore all items in the Library folder. Log out and log back in as soon as the restore is complete.
Any other invisible folders or files at the top level of your home folder that you want to preserve will have to be restored separately. For most users, that isn't necessary.
You'll have to reinstall all third-party applications from scratch, or restore them from another kind of backup, if you have one.
You'll have another problem if this is a new computer, or if you erased the startup volume: The next time you back up, Time Machine won't recognize any files as being the same as they were before, and will make a full copy of all files. There might not be enough space on one or more of your backup volumes for that. There are different ways of dealing with that situation, depending on your needs. The easiest way is to set your backup drives aside, if possible, until you're sure you'll no longer need the data on them, then erase them and start over. Meanwhile start a new backup on one or more empty storage devices. If that solution isn't workable for you, ask for instructions.
*If you don't see any snapshots in Time Machine, exit the time-travel view and then hold down the option key while selecting
Browse Other Backup Disks...
from the Time Machine menu, which has an icon that looks like a clock running backwards. Select the backups of your computer by its previous name. If you don't have the Time Machine menu, open the Time Machine preference pane in System Preferences and check the box marked
Show Time Machine in menu bar

How migrate from older time machine backup (not the latest)?

My old Snow Leopard Mac had a dying hard drive. In the last few days, files were disappearing left and right.
I bought a new Lion Mac, but I don't trust the Time Machine backup for the last few days and I would like to migrate the backup from just before the problems started.
I can't figure out any way to do this. Migration Assistant only offers to import the latest backup
And the full Time Machine Restore feature, which DOES allow you to pick a backup, only works on the original machine, which will not boot any more.
Can I somehow trick Migration Assistant by deleting the last few backups from the Time Machine drive and renaming the one I want to use to Latest? (I've made a copy of the entire Time Machine folder just in case...)
Any other way to do this? I'm sure many people are in this situation.

I have this same question. My hard drive died, and the last few Time Machine backups appear to be incomplete or corrupted. New hard drive installed now. Migration Assistant and Setup Assistant first refuse to even recognize my backup drive, then insist on migrating data from the newest backup instead of an older (but definitely complete and reliable) backup. So I haven't migrated anything and am still using my old (OS 10.4) computer until i get this straightened out. Ideas?

Time Machine on Mountain Lion Server Accepts But Doesn't See Backups From Lion

I recently (hopefully) upgraded our Mac Mini Server from Snow Leopard Server to Mountain Lion plus the Server app. A Drobo F is attached via FireWire and has a Time Machine partition on it. I've configured the Server app to offer the Time Machine partition on the Drobo for backups and we've got three machines using it: a relatively new MacBook Air running 10.8.2, an aging MacBook Pro running 10.8.2, and a pretty new MacBook Pro running 10.7.5. All three of the machines are able to backup to the Time Machine volume on the Mini. However…
Only the backups from the two machines running ML show up on the Time Machine Backups tab in the Server app. There is an entry for the Backups from the Lion machine, but the latest backup is reported as "Unknown." If I click on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar on the Lion machine it shows a reasonable (and recent) time for the latest backup. The log entries in Console for com.apple.backupd also look reasonable – and uninteresting. And newly backuped up files are visible in Time Machine.
The on obvious difference that I notice is that the in the .sparsebundle folders for the ML machines there are two files called:
com.apple.TimeMachine.Results.plist, and
com.apple.TimeMachine.SnapshotHistory.plist
Those files are not present in the .sparsebundle folder for the Lion machine (even after a successful backup).
Is this a clue or is it a Lion vs ML difference?
Does anybody have a Lion machine successfully backing up to a ML server and showing up on the Backups tab?
Any advice on this would be appreciated!

Same here - TM clients running 10.6.8 display as "unknown" on the /Backups tab on ML Server (ML 10.8.3).
My one client on a ML machine is correctly displayed (time/date of last TM backup).
As far as I can tell, the TM backups are working properly on the 10.6.8 machines. The problem seems to be a bug in ML Server
Solution: upgrade all 10.6.8 machines to Mountain Lion.
Roadblock: my 1st-gen MacBook Air doesn't support ML.

How to save SOME time machine Mac backups from the TM disk to other disk WITHOUT formatting the destination disk?

Hi,
How to save SOME time machine Mac backups from the TM disk to other disk WITHOUT formatting the destination disk?
I have a Time Machine disk (A) including the backups of several different Macs (B, C, D & E) generated with an old Mac OS X 10.5.8 (iMac PowerPC) over the years.
I have transferred the old Mac contents to a new Mac with OS X 10.8.3 using Migration Assitant. All OK.
Now, I want to erase such TM disk A to use if for other purposes, but first, I would like to RECOVER the backups of some Macs inside it (D and E). Is that possible WITHOUT formatting the destination disk and selecting only some Macs from the TM disk and not the fulll TM disk? How?
Thanks.

Thanks for the reply. I do not think that is messy, anway. I simply used the same external disk as Time Machine disk for different Macs. And that worked OK all the time for years.
The ExternalTimeMachineDisk contains the folder Backups.backupdb
which contains the following folders (each one corresponding to the Time Machine backup made from each Mac):
Mac1
Mac2
MacBook1
MacBook2
In relation to my message above, is it possible to select specific files, folders or full Mac backups from such Time Machine disk and save them to other disk? How?
Thanks.

Restore to Snow Leopard from Lion Time Machine

Hello,
I want to downgrade from OS X Lion to Snow Leopard (due to numerou reasons being discussed all around). Problem is, after upgrading to Lion, I erased my Snow Leopard Time Machine backup, and created a new one while running Lion (I edited a lot of files and stuff). My question is once I downgrade to SL, using the method of erasing the HDD completely and doing a fresh install, can I restore my backup from the Time Machine created in Lion? If no, then how can I access my files and folders in Snow Leopard then.
Sorry if this has ben posted in the wrong section, but I would appreciate some help on this.
Cheers
~n~

Downgrade Lion to Snow Leopard
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.
This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard. I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.1.

How to merge two iTunes libraries, one from a Time Machine backup. Help!

Hey there,
Here´s the backstory, my laptop was stolen (along with my older iPod which had ALL of my music on it) in February. I am from Minnesota, and I now live in New York, but my backup from December was in Minnesota at that time. On me at the time my laptop got stolen was my 32 gig iPod Touch, which had ~80% of my music on it, but not all of it due to capacity issues. I bought a new Macbook and loaded all of my music that I HAD onto my new laptop, and of course have downloaded a bunch of stuff since then. I really like my new Macbook so I want to just pull and merge my old iTunes library onto my new computer, without duplicates and without having to manually go and delete things. Since my iPod Touch was loaded randomly, I have a lot of albums that have something like 11 out of the 12 songs or whathaveyou. I tried restoring from my old Time Machine backup, but I have realized that I really liked the cleanness and functionality of my new computer without three years of detrius in it, so I am going to restore from my NEW Time Machine backup, and would like to get my old music back onto my new computer. If this is confusing at all please let me know and I will try to clarify. Please help me with this, there has to be a program or something!!!

You have some choices. Obvioiusly the easiest thing to do will be to restore the entire library from the Time Machine backup. You can also use the new iTunes in the Cloud feature built into the latest iTunes to download any music and TV shows you might have purchased from the iTunes Store.
So what you could do is first, download your purchases from the iTunes Store, then restore everything else from the TM backup.

Time Machine backup from previous install

Hey there,
I am a small question for the use of Time Machine. I have a week of backups in Time Machine and I am pretty happy with how it works, but my questions is IF I format my computer with a clean install of Leopard, will my "old" backups in Time Machine still work with the new install?
Will I be able to recover some files etc. from TM when backuped up in an old install?
Thank you in advance.
Kristia

It worked for me. I had several major problems with Leopard, I think due in part to using Disk Warrior on it. So I removed it and installed Tiger from a (cloned copy) external backup drive. Once my work was done I backed it up, then reinstalled Leopard via Time Machine restore running off the Leopard install DVD. I chose an earlier date, to avoid the problems I saw on the last time I used it and this time it worked.
The only thing was it took about 17 hours to restore the iMac back to Leopard.
I am using a Buffalo one TB external drive as my Time Machine backup drive. I highly recommend it since as soon as your current drive fills up Time Machine will start to recycle the previous backup copies. So the larger the drive the greater time span you can go back and recover from, otherwise over time your old files will be lost.
I hope this answered your question.
Don

Mail from Lion Time Machine Backup to Mountain Lion

Hello,
My Lion iMac is crashed and now I want to put my Mail database from Lion Time Machine Backup to my Mountain Lion Mac Mini.
In Migration-assistent under Users there is no topic for Address Book, Calendar and Mail. Also the helpdesk told me not to use the migration-assistent but doing it manually.
How can I add extra accounts from the Lion Time Machine Backup ?
I have already <emailaccount1> working on my Mac Mini. It is just merging <emailaccount2> upto <emailaccount7>.
Is it just copying Library/Mail/V2/POP-<emailaccount2> to ~/Library/Mail/V2/POP-<emailaccount2> or do I have to change something under Preferences ?
Thanks,
Hubert

Hello Sig,
This helped but the original mail data is deleted completely. I tried it on a dummy account and discovered that the original data of <emailaccount1> is deleted by copying the Mail folder onto the original one.
So I made a copy of the Mail folder before overwriting it. Then I copied the deleted mbox files back to the Mailboxes folder and started Mail.app.
Thanks,
Hubert

I brought my itunes library onto a mac from a windows machine and now i have two separate libraries. How can I merge them?

I moved to Mac from a Windows machine where I had downloaded all of my CDs into iTunes. When I got my Mac it only put my purchased items into my library. So I merged my windows library and it created a whole new user account with that on it. I now have two libraries and can only sync music with one account or I lose all of my imported CDs. Help! How do I merge them.

The easiest way is to get both computers on your home network and copy the files over the network. It's easier than you think
Check this earlier thread:
[How do I move my itunes library to new computer|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7937172&#7937172]
That thread mentions Target Disk Mode, which won't help moving from a PC to a Mac. But you can use file sharing to copy the files.
As the articles all say: don't forget to de-authorize your PC before you get rid of it.

Merging Backups from a cloned machine

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