Using time machine after migration

I have just migrated from an old iMac to a new iMac.  The old iMac backed up to a time machine.  Can I set up the new iMac to backup to the SAME DATA (as if it were the same computer)?  Or must I set up a new back-up?  (I have a ton of data so will have to hard wire to do this- a pain- so would rather not if I dont have to).

Michek wrote:
I used this external hard disk to migrate from my older Macbook to the new one.
Exactly how did you do that?  
If you used Setup Assistant when the new Mac started up (preferred), or the Migration Assistant app later on, and let it transfer Computer Settings, when the next backup started, you should have been asked if you wanted the new Mac to "inherit" the old Mac's backups.  See #B5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting for more explanation and details.
If you did something else, or answered the prompt with Create New Backup, you may be able to do that manually.  It's a bit geeky, though. See #B6 in the same link.

Similar Messages

  • Using Time Machine AFTER Migrating

    I used Migration assistant to switch from a macbook to a macbook pro (successfully). However, now Time Machine failed to find the old Time Machine backup drive. I had hoped that I would be able to retain my backups after migrating. Is this not possible?

    Actually, Time Machine does not use an IP address in the name of the backupdb, but rather the MAC address, the hardware address hard-coded into each individual Mac.
    I just upgraded to a newer Mac last week, so looked into this. I thought it would be nice to keep all my backups back to my Leopard installation.
    While it is possible to "merge" the backups from the older Mac to the newer one, on reflection it seemed to me to be more hassle (and potential danger, if you inadvertently restore an older system-type file) than it's worth.
    Instead, I decided to keep the old backupdb around for a few weeks, just in case I remember that I've lost something; its files can still be accessed. If I don't realize I'm missing something within that time, I probably never will. So I will eventually just delete the old backupdb to free up space.
    It's important to remember that the primary purpose of Time Machine is to enable restoration of a failed hard drive or inadvertently deleted file. TM is not intended to be a permanent archive of everything on the drive; none of us has enough spare hard drive space for that. For those files I want to archive in virtual perpetuity, I archive them separately to a safe location or DVD/CD.
    Another option, if you want to retain that older backupdb, is to use SuperDuper! to create a disk image of it which you can store and access at will.
    Hope this helps.

  • I have chosen to fil migrate from old ibook to new MacBook Pro using Time Machine after establishing admin account. I now have two admin. accounts and wish to delete the later one and transfer files manually. I am worried I will loose both accounts. ??

    I have chosen to fil migrate from old ibook to new MacBook Pro using Time Machine after establishing admin account. I now have two admin. accounts and wish to delete the later one and transfer files manually. I am worried I will loose both accounts. ??

    Use the Office for Mac and ignore using Parallels for that. If you have PC only apps you have to run that are MS Windows only then consider Parallels. Just transfer your main PC, using Migration Assistant.  If you don't know how then simply read over Pondini's article called Lion or Mountain Lion Setup Assistant tips and look for the section on migrating from a PC. Millions have done what you are about to, it's far from leading edge these days, if you go to an Apple Store to purchase they will offer this as a service, something you might be interested in.

  • I have a new macbook pro and want to transfer my Mail autofill from my old mac. Never used Time Machine or Migration Assistant -- looks complicated. Any easy way to do this?

    I have a new macbook pro and want to transfer my Mail autofill from my old mac. Never used Time Machine or Migration Assistant -- looks complicated. Any easy way to do this?

    caitlinfromcambridge wrote:
    Thanks -- I would like to try this. I do not know how to reach hard drive from old mac to new. Can you help me with this?
    There are two ways - you can boot your old Mac in Target Mode (reboot your Mac, and as soon as you hear the startup chime hold down the T key on the keyboard until you see the yellow/orange Firewire logo on screen).  You can then use a FireWire cable to connect your new mac to your old one.  The old Mac hard drive will appear on your new Mac as if it is an external hard drive.
    Details on Target Disk Mode:  http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661
    If you don't have a firewire cable but you do have a home network (i.e. both computers can access the Internet at the same time), you can share the hard drive on your old Mac and then connect to it on your new Mac.
    Good article on sharing your hard drive:  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1549
    Finally, if the above doesn't thrill you, you can hook an external drive to your old Mac, copy the mail folder over to it, then connect the external drive to your new Mac and copy it over.  It's two steps, but if you don't have a firewire cable and aren't comfortable with sharing over a network it will work just as well - you just have to wait for the mail folder to copy twice instead of once.
    If you get stuck post back!

  • Could not restore CS5 using Time Machine after changing to Mac OS8.3

    Could not restore Photoshop CS5 using Time Machine after changing to Mac OS8.3 - the change was dictated by a power supply problem (now fixed) in my Macbook Pro - that has been fixed.

    Restoring the Adobe application via Time machine is not a good practise and may cause other issues as well.
    Please install the application properly rather restoring.

  • Time Machine after Migration Assistant restore

    During vacation, my MacBook pro’s hard disk suffered directory corruption so bad that neither Disk Utility nor DiskWarrior could repair it. I knew I had a recent Time Machine backup at the office, so I just reformatted my hard disk, reinstalled, and was up in running again in a few hours.
    When I returned from my holidays, I used Migration Assistant to restore everything from the Time Machine backup, including users, applications, preferences, and other data.
    I experienced several problems:
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    2. The newly re-installed and restored Mac no longer recognized the Time Machine backup as being a backup of itself. This caused additional problems because when I enabled Time Machine again, it tried to make a full backup, saw that there wasn’t enough space on the disk, and deleted all but the most recent backup from the Time Machine volume.
    3. Migration Assistant failed to restore several very important files, including:
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    b. Mail preferences, including accounts and signatures
    c. Keychains, including passwords to WiFi access points and web sites
    d. VPN settings
    e. The Stickies database
    f. Some Address Book contacts
    g. The iTerm.plist file (from ~/Library/Preferences)
    h. Lotus Notes Data (from ~/Library/Application Support)
    i. Other application preferences & data
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    4. Ever since restoring from backup, Mail has exhibited a problem wherein it sometimes displays the wrong message. It doesn’t do this with all messages; only some. For example, if I select the most recent message in my inbox right now, a message received in June is displayed in the preview pane instead.
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    Pondini wrote:
    Michael Lowry wrote:
    2. Time Machine does not recognize old backups as being from the same computer if the Migration Assistant method was used to restore the computer.
    Not exactly, but the result is nearly the same. When you erased the internal HD, it got a new UUID, so to OSX it's a different drive, and everything put back on it was considered as new, and Time Machine backed it up.
    Ah, ok. So if I understand correctly, it was the fact that I reformatted the drive, and not the particular method I used to restore, that led to Time Machine deleting most of the backups. Is that right? I still find it very odd that right after restoring from a backup, the system doesn’t recognize that very same backup.
    I suppose if I had investigated the matter more carefully and spent a few hours reading on the web, I might have learned about some properties file inside the backupdb where I could have manually tweaked the UUID after reformatting. But honestly, how would I have known this? I thought I did things according the proper procedure. When Disk Utility was unable to repair the drive, it displayed specific instructions to back up my files (done), reformat, reinstall, and then restore from backup. When I followed these instructions provided by Disk Utility, my Time Machine backup was rendered unrecognizable, and most of my backups were deleted without warning.
    Moreover, I wonder again: how would a less knowledgeable user experience this?
    I gotta say, this process could be made more user-friendly and the instructions & warnings clearer.
    The iTunes Library was not restored.
    Was it in the default location (the +<your home folder>/Music+ folder)?
    I found the original iTunes Library on the backup disk; I restored these files manually and that fixed iTunes. All of the music had already been restored successfully. And yes, my library was in the ~Music directory.
    Once I’d made iTunes happy, I was able to sync my iPhone. This brought back the missing Address Book contacts, because they were on the phone.
    The Mail database appears to be irretrievably corrupted. I have no confidence any more that clicking on an item in the list will actually display that item.
    Have you tried +Mailbox > Rebuild+ from the Mail menubar?
    I hadn’t seen that option. That fixed it. Thanks!
    This was my first time relying on my Time Machine backup, and I must say I am not satisfied. I work in IT and consider myself a power user; I hate to think how a less expert user would experience this situation. So much for “it just works.”
    Ordinarily it does; this is quite unusual.
    I'm a retired IT guy, and learned many years ago that all hardware fails, sooner or later, and no backup app is perfect, so I always recommend keeping (at least) secondary backups. It's not any help now, of course, but you might want to check out #27 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) for some suggestions.
    I’m not sure I will continue using Time Machine. I like the advantages (multiple versions, integration into some apps, nice UI); but I don’t know if they’re worth much if the backup is not reliable as a system backup. I wonder if an incremental Carbon Copy Cloner backup wouldn’t be better for my needs. A CCC backup would also give me one additional benefit: it would be bootable, virtually eliminating downtime and facilitating quick repair and restoration.
    Thanks again for your suggestions. They have been informative and helpful.

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    I got a Boot Camp error when trying to partition my MacBook after upgrading to Leopard. The error read something like "boot camp failed to partition drive because some files could not be moved, re-install OSX...". Seems to be a relatively common error, some have achieved a work around by not having to do a complete re-install of Leopard by deleting certain files (please share if you have done this). Others just decided to do a complete re-install, that worked fine for them and then they were able to use boot camp and partition...
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    Ok so correct me if I'm wrong here, this is my situation...
    My MacBook has never been partitioned. I recently UPDATED my MacBook with Leopard. I tried to partition the HD with bootcamp and it didn't, the error has something to do with some files that could not be moved. I have an external drive that should be arriving soon that I plan on using with my macbook. I also want to partition my HD to use windows on my macbook.
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  • Time Machine after migration to new Mac

    So, I just got a new Mac, and used the option to copy settings and files from a Time Machine volume to the new machine. Now that everything's run, though, I can't use Time Machine to backup the new Mac -- it says "Volume not found". I've Googled a bit, but most of the troubleshooting seems to assume that the drive is missing or won't mount -- the drive is there, but the Time Machine software won't use it.
    What are my options here?

    Hi VK
    A supplementray question:
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    I have just bought a second i-mac (stops the fighting!) and propose to use migration assistant to move my [admin] account from the old to the new i-mac leaving two other accounts on the old one. I see from your posts that it seems as if Time Machine will start a new back up series for the new i-mac's back ups. But what about the old i-mac? Will that continue to extend the existing Time Machine back up files, albeit without my transferred account and its files? If so, should I partition the external drive and start the new back ups from the new i-mac on this new partition. I'd like to end up with the old i-mac continuing to build its Time Machine back ups (less my account and its files) and have a new back up series from the new i-mac building to a separate partition on the external drive.
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  • Problem using time machine from migrated MacBook Pro

    I upgraded from a 2.66Gig 15 inch dual core to a 2.2GHz 15 inch quad core (MacBook Pro 8,2) - I used setup assistant to transfer files and settings form the old mac to the new one over ethernet - Everything (apps, documents, preferences) transferred fine and the new mac is a clone of the other except for being able to use time machine. On running for the first time I get an error dialog "Time machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk image "Volumes/backups/restOfPath.sparsebundle" could not be accessed(error-1).
    I tried a full reset of TM (deselecting the backup drive, turning off, deleting the preferences .plist and rebooting), with the same result. The image that is created is 1.6TB (on a 1 TB Iomega Home Storage drive). The image of my old time machine reflects the drive size -I don't know if this is a problem, both images are twice the size of the respective mac's inbuilt drives).
    I looked at the troubleshooting tips and installed TM buddy - the log from the new mac shows this:
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    Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Ray%[email protected]/backups
    Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Ray%[email protected]/backups
    Warning: Destination /Volumes/backups does not support TM Lock Stealing
    Warning: Destination /Volumes/backups does not support Server Reply Cache
    Error 257 looking up immutability for /Volumes/backups/Ray-Hicks-MacBook-Pro.local_c82a1408b246.sparsebundle/token
    Error writing Time Machine Information file: /Volumes/backups/Ray-Hicks-MacBook-Pro.local_c82a1408b246.sparsebundle/com.appl e.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist
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    Backup verification incomplete!
    Failed to attach to image: /Volumes/backups/Ray-Hicks-MacBook-Pro.local_c82a1408b246.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 107
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    Cheers
    TM Buddy log from old MacBook follows:
    Starting standard backup
    Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Ray%[email protected]/backups
    Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Ray%[email protected]/backups
    Warning: Destination /Volumes/backups does not support TM Lock Stealing
    Warning: Destination /Volumes/backups does not support Server Reply Cache
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
    Disk image /Volumes/backups/Ray-Hickss-MacBook-Pro.local_109add54a619.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup
    Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb
    No pre-backup thinning needed: 803.6 MB requested (including padding), 748.74 GB available
    Copied 358 files (2.8 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    No pre-backup thinning needed: 800.4 MB requested (including padding), 748.74 GB available
    Copied 31 files (15 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Starting post-backup thinning
    No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
    Backup completed successfully.
    Ejected Time Machine disk image.
    Ejected Time Machine network volume.
    Message was edited by: RayHicks

    Sorry - I totally missed this longer post you made - here are the answers to the best of my knowledge - I seem to have answered a couple accidentally in my next post, but didn't directly address what you'd asked - sorry about that I just totally missed your post before reposting an update to (what I thought was) my one-man thread!
    {quote:title=Pondini wrote:}
    When you set up Time Machine on that NAS, do you create the sparse bundle manually, or does the NAS do it? Is there a setting on the NAS to limit the size? (One of the disadvantages to using a 3rd-party NAS is, few folks here, or with Apple, know much about how that particular NAS interacts with OSX).
    {quote}
    It seems that the NAS does it automatically, sometimes wrongly (it puts the wrong MAC in occasionally, and it appends .local after the username (not sure of the relevance of this, but in the manual setup that got me limping along in the later post, it doesn't mention the .local bit and I didn't use it (maybe this is why the access is through ip address now?)
    Those seem to mean your NAS isn't fully compatible with Snow Leopard. See if there's a software/firmware update for it.
    I'm using the latest firmware, and it works with the other mac also running 10 6.6
    also throwing the same warning but with no apparent problem (yet:P)
    I'd appreciate any help that people can provide - I'm using the same username and password connecting to the backup disc from either mac so I'm presuming it's not an access privilege thing (but if it is I may need an idiots guide to changing these:))
    That would be on the NAS, not OSX, so you'd need their instructions or help.
    Indeed it was (fix seems to be to manually install a newly created sparsebundle)
    You might try repairing the sparse bundle. Follow the instructions for a Time Capsule in #A5 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
    Thanks - I tried that I think ( I read though most of your site and tried many things:)), but with no joy - thanks for taking the time to provide this useful resource.
    On a Time Capsule or AirDisk, where Time Machine creates the sparse bundle, it's actual size starts out at just a few hundred MBs (the directory structure, etc.), then grows as backups are added. It's maximum size is set at the size of the volume it's on.
    That seems to be the way with this too (the actual size is a few hundred megs - though disc utility reports it to be 1.5TB which is twice the size of the Mac disc)
    Thanks again for your time and input,
    Ray

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    NerdSeven wrote:
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    Matt in VA wrote:
    I'm just trying to figure out if, after migrating all my data to my new Mac, what will happen to my Time Machine disk.
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