Time Machine from Leopard to Snow Leopard

I made a backup of my Leopard installation in Time Machine before upgrading to Snow Leopard.
I successfully upgrade to Snow Leopard using the equivalent of Erase and Install (disk utility/erase/partition/install) and instead of running Migration Assistant, I opened my Time Machine disk and selectively copied my documents, music and videos to the appropriate folders on Snow Leopard.
Now, the question is if I set Time Machine on SL to backup to the same disk, will I be able to restore a file to the Leopard version of the Time Machine or only the Snow Leopard version?
In other words, will I lose all my previous Time Machine backups if I choose the same disk? If so, if I move the "latest" folder from Time Machine to a separate location, will I be able to restore from that copy?

rpmm wrote:
Yes I meant "from".
For the second part what I wanted to do is just copy the last version to a separate drive and use that to possibly pull files from that location if needed. And then just reformat the current TM drive and start with the first backup from SL. Is that not a good idea?
Not do-able. TM uses a very complex structure for it's backups, including multiple "hard links" at both the file and folder level. You cannot copy them with the Finder.
What you can do, however, is restore your entire system to that separate drive, from the last Leopard backup, via the instructions in item #14 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip.* Of course, select that external as the destination, not your internal HD. Once it's done, boot from the external and use some of the apps to be sure everything's there before erasing the TM drive.
The reason I did erase and install was I wanted a clean start, not having all of the apps I had, not having all the extra files I had, etc.

Similar Messages

  • Trying to Time Machine from Leopard to new mac Snow L

    I just got a new MacBook Pro 10.6.3 and am trying to restore via Time Machine from my current 10.5.8. I just waited 2 hours "Copying Volumes" but nothing happened.
    I must be missing something simple but I can't find it.
    thanks
    brian

    Hi, and welcome to the forums.
    If you mean you're doing a full system restore, that's not going to work. A new Mac that came with Snow Leopard cannot run Leopard.
    You'll need to boot up from the Snow Leopard Install disc that came with your new Mac. Select your language, then from the menubar, select Utilities, then +Disk Utility+ and reformat your internal HD. See the yellow box in #1 of [Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html]. Use the GUID *Partition Map Scheme* and +Mac OS Extended+ Format. That will only take a few moments.
    Then quit Disk Utility and install OSX.
    When your Mac restarts, it will be just like it came from the factory. Use +Setup Assistant+ to transfer your data from your old Mac or it's backups, per [Setting up a new Mac from an old one or its backups|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Setup.html].

  • Will Time Machine with Leopard Sync With New Hard Drive and Snow Leopard?

    My computer is a 20" iMac that I bought in late 2008. The hard drive had trouble so Apple repaired with disk utility. Week later, more trouble so they did full hard drive erase. Data was backed up on Time Machine, 500GB also bought in 2008. After full hard drive erase, and reinstall of basic software, upon reboot, computer would power on then immediately off. It doesn't get past white screen. They advised a new hard drive install is needed.
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    thetrudz wrote:
    A computer friend can install a hard drive just fine for me. However, I do not have the Leopard install disc.
    Hi, and welcome to the forums.
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    He could do it with Snow Leopard but I am scared.
    If he does, and doesn't provide a retail Snow Leopard disc, you must buy one ($29). It's a violation of the license to share software, and you'll need a SL disc to do things like restore a Snow Leopard backup, or the Snow Leopard Apple apps, or repair the internal HD.
    Your best bet is to stay with Leopard, at least until you have access to your 3rd-party software discs.
    What you can do, however, is borrow his Snow Leopard Install disc (assuming it's a white Retail disc, not a gray one that came with his Mac), and use it to do a full system restore from your backups. That's not a violation of the license, since you don't install or use OSX from that disc; you just use the Installer utility on it to restore the Leopard OSX and all your data from your backups.
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  • I have a new macbook air, and want to transfer all my data using time machine from my old macbook running leopard, is this possible and easy

    I have a new macbook air, and want to transfer all my data using time machine from my old macbook running leopard, is this possible and easy and will it transfer all my musc and photos?

    The Setup Assistant can restore your data from a Time Machine backup. You'll be asked if you want to do this the first time you turn the computer on.
    (60797)

  • Time machine on Leopard server..

    I'm considering having my clients (only 10) use Time Machine to perform backups of their User directories using Leopard Server. The current configuration has them using OD Mobile Accounts with Portable Home Directories.
    My question is how Time Machine would be implemented.
    Would I have to revert to Local Home Directories?
    I would like each user to be able to use the Time Machine space view, allowing them to view previous versions of files and/or deleted files.
    Thanks!

    I'd also really like to know more about Time Machine on Leopard Server. I just purchased a copy of Server and am trying to figure out a good backup system. I haven't yet installed it, but once I do I'm interested in setting things up so that users can have their home directories on the server and log in from any machine. I've never really figured out if that will require Portable Home Directories or what.
    At any rate, I'm not sure if users will have to set up their machines individually to target the server as a Time Machine destination (and then I'd just exclude those home directories from the server's Time Machine setup), or if I can just set the server to run Time Machine and then the users will be able to access all of their histories.
    I really hope that it's the latter, because that would make changing things like the drive configuration on the server so much easier.
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  • Can I back up to Time Machine from hard drive of failed Macbook?

    My Macbook has just completely failed (I think an issue with power supply).
    I had a bulging battery and have a new Macbook Pro on the way, but as I live in a very remote area this is taking a while. So, one day, my Macbook just wouldn't start again.
    I hadn't backed up to Time Machine for about a week and would really like to get all the missing data. When the new computer arrives I'm planning to use Migration Assistant to migrate all my data from Time Machine.
    So, my question is, is it possible to back up to Time Machine from the hard drive of my dead Macbook? I was thinking either cloning it somehow, or making a disk image and booting it from another Macbook, but this is stretching the limits of my limited IT skills. I don't want to interfere with the other Macbook I'm using or inadvertently wipe the data on the hard drive or Time Machine disk.
    Any advice much appreciated!
    My Macbook ran Snow Leopard and was up to date with software updates as of two days ago. It was purchased about two years ago, but I think it's manufacture date was about March 2008.

    Thanks Noondaywitch and Pondini!
    The HD of the failed Macbook turned out to be fine. Just to be safe I did a full functional back-up of my Time Machine disk to another external disk as well as cloning my Macbook hard drive using Carbon Cloner to another partition of the external disk.
    I then booted from a friend's Macbook and did an incremental Time Machine backup from the original Macbook HD to the original TM backup (making sure I excluded the host computer's hard drive from the backup!); when I did the backup it asked whether I wanted to "Reuse backup" I clicked yes.
    As said, the hard drive was fine, but at setup I needed an ethernet or firewire connection, which I didn't have on the enclosure, so I migrated my data to the new Macbook Pro using the original TM backup. Strangely, the backup said it was transferring only 120GB, whereas the HD had 150GB of used space. Redundant files, etc. perhaps? Anyway, it's just transferring now, so will sit back and read the paper and see what it looks like in an hour and a half!
    Thanks very much again!
    Now, if anyone's got any suggestions to fix my old Macbook, which I was going to give away to impecunious friends if they bought a new battery……
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  • How to stop time machine from backing up encrypted lion partition

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  • Using Time Machine from external hard drive to start using a new MacBook

    I recently totalled my MacBook (white) and am now looking to replace it with a second hand MacBook. I have an (un-totalled) external harddrive and have been using Time Machine to keep everything backed up. I found a second hand MacBook at a reasonable price but it runs OSX Tiger, whereas my old one ran Leopard. So my question is, will it be possible to plug in my external harddrive and restore everything, including the operating system, on this new (used) MacBook, or should I be looking for one that runs Leopard?
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    You can restore from Time Machine using Leopard or Snow Leopard only. What I would do if I were you is buy either of the MacBooks, but make sure you get a Snow Leopard install disc--either a retail one if you buy the Tiger MacBook, or the install disc for the pre-loaded software on the SL MacBook.
    Use the SL install disc to completely erase and (re)install Snow Leopard on the MacBook. Since your Mac will be second-hand, you should fully erase it and start fresh, just in case there are some nasty little malwares left behind or other problems the original owner didn't want to deal with.
    After the install, use Migration Assistant to get your data off the TM drive.

  • How do I stop Time Machine from backing up Aperture thumbnails?

    Hi,
    My 2TB backup drive recently became full, and I became curious as to what was filling it up. I wrote a perl script to analyze the Time Machine backups, and I noticed that over 50% of my backup was filled with AP.Thumbnails and AP.Minis from the Aperture project directory. In particular, the AP.Thumbnails files in the backup consumed 737 GB of disk space!
    The problem with the thumbnails files is that they are a single file that contains all of the thumbnails for all of the 40,000 photos I have in Aperture and it is now 20gb in size. Every time I add a new file to Aperture, the thumbnail file changes, and I get a new 20gb of data added to my backup. I add photos often which means that most of my backups have 20gb of Aperture files (which are easy to rebuild and don't need to be backed up).
    I decided to try and stop Time Machine from backing up these files, and there seems to be no way of doing so (without telling Time Machine to skip backing up my entire Aperture project which I don't want to do). In Finder, you can do a "show package contents", but the Time Machine GUI doesn't allow this.
    I tried to tell Time Machine to exclude the files via the GUI, but Time Machine sees the Aperture Library as a single package and won't let me exclude individual files from within the package.
    I googled around, and found the attribute that Time Machine puts on files to exclude them from the backup. I used xattr to set the attributes:
    xattr -w com.apple.metadata:comapple_backupexcludeItem com.apple.backupd <filename>
    I also used this command on the iPhoto thumbnail files.
    I used spotlight to find all of the files with this attribute using this command:
    sudo mdfind "comapple_backupexcludeItem = 'com.apple.backupd'"
    This command returned the iPhoto files, but did not return the Aperture files.
    However, if I run "xattr" on the Aperture files, the attribute does exist!
    During my next time machine backup, the iPhoto files were skipped as I wanted them to be, but the Aperture thumbnails were backed up again
    I thought that maybe time machine was looking at the aperture package as an atomic unit, but iPhoto is stored as a package as well, and the attributes worked there on files inside the package.
    Does anyone have any idea why time machine is still backing up these files? Is there any way I can get around this?
    It seems to me to be an incredible oversight on Apple's part since both tools are Apple. The thumbnails files are very expensive to backup, and they are not necessary for backup since the are easy to rebuild from the original photos which are also backed up.
    Thanks,
    Ron

    Shadow99999 wrote:
    Hi,
    My 2TB backup drive recently became full, and I became curious as to what was filling it up. I wrote a perl script to analyze the Time Machine backups,
    No need to write your own script for that. there are a couple of already made nice GUI tools for this - TimeTracker http://www.charlessoft.com/ and BackupLoupe http://soma-zone.com/BackupLoupe/
    and I noticed that over 50% of my backup was filled with AP.Thumbnails and AP.Minis from the Aperture project directory. In particular, the AP.Thumbnails files in the backup consumed 737 GB of disk space!
    The problem with the thumbnails files is that they are a single file that contains all of the thumbnails for all of the 40,000 photos I have in Aperture and it is now 20gb in size. Every time I add a new file to Aperture, the thumbnail file changes, and I get a new 20gb of data added to my backup. I add photos often which means that most of my backups have 20gb of Aperture files (which are easy to rebuild and don't need to be backed up).
    I decided to try and stop Time Machine from backing up these files, and there seems to be no way of doing so (without telling Time Machine to skip backing up my entire Aperture project which I don't want to do). In Finder, you can do a "show package contents", but the Time Machine GUI doesn't allow this.
    I tried to tell Time Machine to exclude the files via the GUI, but Time Machine sees the Aperture Library as a single package and won't let me exclude individual files from within the package.
    I don't have aperture but I think most people exclude the whole thing from TM backups and back it up separately. but if you want to exclude a subfolder in a package that's easy too. just select the package in finder, control-click on it and select "show package contents". in the resulting finder window drill to the folder you want to exclude and drag it to the TM exclusion list in TM system preferences->options.
    I googled around, and found the attribute that Time Machine puts on files to exclude them from the backup. I used xattr to set the attributes:
    xattr -w com.apple.metadata:comapple_backupexcludeItem com.apple.backupd <filename>
    I was not aware of this method for excluding stuff from TM backups. could you provide a link to where you found this?
    I also used this command on the iPhoto thumbnail files.
    I used spotlight to find all of the files with this attribute using this command:
    sudo mdfind "comapple_backupexcludeItem = 'com.apple.backupd'"
    This command returned the iPhoto files, but did not return the Aperture files.
    that's because Spotlight never looks inside packages unless you start a search inside a package directly. iphoto seems to be the only exception. I don't know how it's done.

  • How do i use a Time Machine from another computer from Time Capsule with multibackups

    Can Iuse a Time Machine from another computer from Time Capsule with multibackups

    Not sure what you are asking here. 
    Time Machine is software on a Mac that is used to backup that Mac to a Time Capsule hard drive.
    Are you asking if another  Mac can backup to the same Time Capsule that other Macs are already using?
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  • How do I move data on time machine from one external hard drive to another

    How do I move data on time machine from one external hard drive to another?

    Although the documentation says you can copy Time Machine backups in the Finder, it's very slow and sometimes doesn't work at all.
    Launch Disk Utility, open the built-in help, and search for the term "Duplicate." Follow the instructions. Turn Time Machine OFF in its preference pane while copying the volume.

  • How do I retrieve data from time machine from an old mac (which was running 10.5) on my new iMac running mavericks?

    How do I retrieve data from time machine from an old mac (which was running 10.5) on my new iMac running mavericks?

    See B 5/6.
    Time Machine Troubleshooting

  • How to stop Time Machine from backing up Temp Files?

    Hi folks!
    I am trying to find out how to stop Time Machine from constantly backing up 'useless' temporary files accumulated from web browsing? Although I don't change or add large files to my HD, Time Machine backs up hundreds of MBs every hour. Those file amounts make sense when I consider that I browse a lot to YouTube, SoundCloud, etc to watch videos or listen to music - I just don't want them to be backed up.
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    ~/Downloads
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    Can you help?
    Thanks a lot in advance!

    oas2103 wrote:
    they come from my anti-virus software
    Are you sure you need that? There are no viruses that run on OSX. None. Zip. Zero.
    If you're running Windoze on your Mac, that's the same as running it on a PC, so it needs all the same anti-everything stuff you'd use on a PC.
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    You're quite welcome, and thanks for posting back.

  • How to disable Time Machine from backing up to hard drive

    Mountain Lion (OSX 10.8) will not install onto iMac (under OSX 10.7.4) because: "hard drive is Time Machime backup disk" error message.  However, TM Preferences does not show the iMac HD as a TM backup Location Option - it only shows the LaCie External Drive - which has been the storage drive receiving the Time Machine Backup.  How do I remove/prevent Time Machine from looking for and/or backing up to the iMac Hard Drive if the TM Pref does not list the iMac Hard Drive as an option? Note: The iMac HD icon on the desktop is a "Time Machine image" (blue Drive icon w/white white counter clockwise arrow).  Thanks.

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  • Just migrated using time machine from MacBook Pro to older Macbook. iPhoto 9.4.3 won't open. Tried reinstall - no change.

    Just migrated using time machine from MacBook Pro to older Macbook. iPhoto 9.4.3 won't open. Tried reinstall - no change. (Mac OS X 10.7.5)

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