Using time machine to format new hard drive

Hi there, hope this is a relatively easy question!
Long story short, my macbook pro's harddrive recently decided to stop working. I will being installing a new one in the next few days. I've made a bootable USB drive with Mavericks on it, however my time machine save was a couple of months ago (yes I know, I know) completed just before I updated to Mavericks.
If I install Mavericks onto my new hard drive and then restore the pro using my time machine will it cause any problems? I would think it would just restore back to the previous OS and I'll just have to download Mavericks again? Or would you recommend using Migration Assistant instead - but from what I've read this doesn't actually bring any of your previous programmes/apps into your new hard drive?
I don't really have anything important on my hard drive so I'm not bothering with trying to recover data from it.
Thanks in advance for your help! Hopefully this means I can soon be reunited with my pro!

little_lab_rat wrote:
If I install Mavericks onto my new hard drive and then restore the pro using my time machine will it cause any problems?
Of course not. Moreover, Migration Assistant (and Setup Assistant) is designed to transfer Time Machine backups created with an older Mac OS X version, so this is not a problem.
What you can do is to restore the Time Machine backup first (hold Command and R keys while your Mac is starting up, choose the option to restore a Time Machine backup, and follow the steps), and then, download OS X Mavericks from the Mac App Store and upgrade.
Another option you have is to download the OS X Mavericks installer from the bootable USB drive and point it to install to the internal hard drive. Then, during its setup, it will ask you to transfer your files from a backup.
little_lab_rat wrote:
Or would you recommend using Migration Assistant instead - but from what I've read this doesn't actually bring any of your previous programmes/apps into your new hard drive?
If I were you, I would choose the second option I gave you. That option allows you to choose what files you want to restore, so you will have a cleaner OS X copy that may improve performance, and it takes less time than the first option. Also, there's no risk, because in the first option, the Mavericks upgrade may fail.

Similar Messages

  • HT4413 When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, only some files and applications and setting are transferred, not all of them. In my latest back up I have them all. How can I fix that?

    When migrating from time machine to a new hard drive, not all is transferd, only partial documents, applications , settings etc. How can I migrate the latest back-up with all the content.

    sohs wrote:
    When migrating from time machine to a new hard drive, not all is transferd, only partial documents, applications , settings etc. How can I migrate the latest back-up with all the content.
    If you want to use Time Machine to recover the contents of one of its a backups to a new drive, follow the instructions in Mac OS X 10.6: Recovering your entire system. Note that you must select the "Restore System From Backup" option from the Utilities menu of the Installer disc to do this.
    Also note that if you are transferring files to a hard drive to be used with a different computer, you should use Migration Assistant instead. This intentionally will not copy everything because some settings, applications, etc. are not compatible computer-to-computer. Migration Assistant will copy everything that is.

  • HT201250 When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, it migrates the first back-up I made several years ago. How can I migrate the latest back-up ?

    When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, it migrates the first back-up I made several years ago. How can I migrate the latest back-up ? I need time machine to migrate the latest back-up. Should I delete the older back-ups ?

    As noondaywitch says, it should use the latest backup.
    Where are your backups (external HD, Time Capsule, etc.)?
    It sounds like there are two separate sets, and you're not connected to the right set.

  • How to reinstall from time machine onto a new hard drive?

    how to reinstall the system from time machine to a new hard drive?

    If you are connected to the internet you can do this.
    Boot your computer and immediately hold down command, option and R  (three keys together). This gets you connected with internet recovery.
    See this article for more directions: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718.
    This process installs an OS on your blank drive. You can then boot from the fresh OS installation and restore from your Time Machine back up.
    Note that you cannot boot from a TM back up.

  • Can you use time machine on a networked hard drive

    Can you use time machine on a networked hard drive? 

    See if this helps: Using Time Machine with a networked hard drive

  • Using time Capsule to replace new hard drive on MacBook Pro?

    I am replacing the internal hard drive on my MacBook pro (early 2008).  I have a time capsule that I would like to use to restore the entire back-up on the time capsule to the new hard drive.  What is the procedure to do this?  Thanks.

    First, prep the new drive:
    Drive Preparation
    1.  Boot from your OS X 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. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
    5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
    6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
    Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.
    Second, install Snow Leopard on the new drive.
    Third, after Snow Leopard starts for the first time you will be in the Setup Assistant. When you complete the registration you will be presented with the options for continuing or restoring from a TM backup or another Mac. Select the TM option and restore your data.

  • Using Time Machine to restore external hard drive data

    I have been using a Mac Mini running 10.6.8 for years as a media server.  I have always been very careful to maintain backups of everything, and the inevitable did happen - the hard drive containing all my media did fail.
    To clarify my set up, my Mac Mini internal hard drive is insufficient to store all my media, so I have been using an external 2TB drive to store it.  I then set up Time Machine to back up both the Mac Mini and the 2TB external drive to a second 3TB external drive.  Now that the 2TB drive with my media has failed, I seem to be having problems restoring all the media from 3TB drive.  This is because the Time Capsule interface is designed to display finder windows at various points in time so you can go back to when your missing files existed and restore them.  The problem is that I need the entire contents of the dead 2TB drive restored to a new drive, but I can't open a Time Capsule window that shows the contents of the old drive.  I have tried opening /Volumes in a finder window, then invoking Time Machine, but my dead hard drive does not show up in the list of volumes.  When I open the 3TB drive in a Finder window I can clearly see that it has backups of the 2TB drive, but they are spread out among 83 different snapshots of various dates.
    How can I use Time Machine to easily restore the entire contents of the dead 2TB external drive to a new external drive?

    This web site might answer all of your Time machine questions:
    http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
    Ciao.

  • Using Time machine with an external hard drive and AEBS???have a

    I have a 500GB external hard drive that I have connected to my AEBS by USB. Recently upgraded to Leopard but cannot get time machine to see my hard drive.
    The base station is 802.11n.
    Is this possible?
    Have read a few other threads and can't seem to get to the bottom of it.
    Thanks,
    T

    In addition, when you get Time Machine to be able to see your external drive connected to AEBS, in TM prefs exclude all but one small folder from your hard drive (say, /User/Library) and allow TM to do its initial backup. This will create the sparsebundle (resizable disk image) that TM uses to back up to a network drive.
    Then turn off Time Machine, unmount the USB drive and reconnect it directly to your Mac, mount it, set TM prefs to use the sparsebundle that newly-mounted drive, remove previously excluded items from TM's exclusion list, and turn TM back on. TM will then back up everything much more quickly than if connected wirelessly.
    After that, you can return the USB drive to the AEBS. Incremental backups take much less time, so the slower connection won't matter as much.

  • HT5097 I recently upgraded my macbook to Mountain lion.  Before doing so I used time machine and an external hard drive to back up my entire laptop.  When we upgraded my computer came back like new. All pics, music, videos documents etc gone.  How do I ge

    I recently upgraded my macbook to mountain lion.  Before doing so I used time machine to back up my entire laptop with an external hard drive. 
    When I got my computer back it was clean....all pics, music, documents, bookmarks etc. are gone.  How do I get these files off the external hard drive and back onto my laptop with the new upgrade?

    I recently upgraded my macbook to mountain lion.  Before doing so I used time machine to back up my entire laptop with an external hard drive. 
    When I got my computer back it was clean....all pics, music, documents, bookmarks etc. are gone.  How do I get these files off the external hard drive and back onto my laptop with the new upgrade?

  • Can't get Time Machine to see new hard drive

    since I now have three computers using time machine to back up to one hard drive via airport base station USB connection, I decided to upgrade to a 1 TB hard drive from a 300 gb. The new HD is showing up as a shared drive in Finder attached to my wireless base station. However it's not showing up as a drive in Time Machine's setup. What I am missing here. The 300 gb drive worked fine.
    Roger

    Is the drive properly prepared?
    Extended Hard Drive Preparation
    1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X 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 Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
    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. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
    4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
    5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
    6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
    This may be necessary for use with TM. Is the larger drive installed in an enclosure that supports drives larger than 500 GBs up to at least 1 TB?

  • Use time machine to backup external hard drive (not main one)

    Hi all,
    I've searched for information on this and getting nowhere. Not sure if it's possible, but I have two USB hard drives now as I've run out of space on my laptop. So therefore I really use one of the hard drives for my main storage and drag files across to the other one to back that up.
    It would be easier if I could just use time machine to back up the one external hard drive to the other. I don't want to just replicate what's on my laptop hard drive.
    Does anyone know if this is possible? Would appreciate any help.
    Cheers
    Paul

    Thanks for your reply V.K. much appreciated.
    I have gone into the options and I can see my external drives there, but for some reason I can't remove them from the exclusion list. I can add and remove the Laptop HD from this list, but for some reason the "-" button becomes disabled whenever I select the external Hard Drives.
    Is there a reason for this? I've been using both drives for a while, so they are both Mac formatted.
    Thanks again.

  • Intermittently using Time Machine with an External Hard Drive

    Ok, Kappy answered some questions I had about how Time Machine works with an external hard drive.
    After doing more reading about Time Machine, I found out that a person can, for example, leave the drive powered-off for a couple of weeks and only periodically or intermittently use Time Machine for back up. However, in the online article I read dated 2009, the author suggested that he didn't know how well Time Machine would work making up for the two weeks, or however long, no files had been backed up.
    Specific questions: I have 10.6.3 SL (I have not yet been brave enough to download 10.6.4) and a 4 month old iMac. 1) Have any of you had experience with only periodically using Time Machine for back up and 2) with my current system would you think I might run into some trouble if I only intermittently backed-up using Time Machine?
    Thanks for reading this and thanks if you feel my questions warrant answering.
    Note: I do have another external hard drive where I occasionally manually back-up photos, gifs, music, etc.

    JohnHusk wrote:
    Ok, Kappy answered some questions I had about how Time Machine works with an external hard drive.
    After doing more reading about Time Machine, I found out that a person can, for example, leave the drive powered-off for a couple of weeks and only periodically or intermittently use Time Machine for back up.
    If you go several days between backups, Time Machine may have to do a "deep traversal," comparing every folder on your system to the backups, to determine what's changed and needs to be backed-up. This depends on the volume of changes, so can happen after an OSX update, but in other circumstances might be after several days. This isn't a big problem, but it does take longer, and the more data you have, the longer it takes.
    Worse, after an extended period, Time Machine may do a new, full backup of your entire system, rapidly filling-up your TM drive.
    If that's the way you want to back up, Time Machine is not the backup app for you. One of it's main features is the way it can do quick hourly backups of what's changed, so you have an excellent chance of recovering a previous version (or versions) when you change or delete something in error, or a file comes up corrupted, or your Mac fails.
    Why don't you want to just leave the drive connected and Time Machine running, to protect you best, as it was designed to do?
    For alternatives designed to do less frequent backups, see Kappy's post on Basic Backup.

  • HT201250 Using Time Machine as an external hard drive

    I backed up my iMac with an external hard drive using Time Machine; can I delete all the data from my iMac now? My real goal is to use the 1TB external hard drive I just got to store all my music, photos, and other files on. I want to clear all the space off of my iMac, and may by a new Macbook. I want to be able to access all the files from my original computer on either, while cleaning out the iMac. Was it pointless for me to use Time Machine? Thanks so much for the feedback!

    You cannot use the files in the Time Machine backup and while it is possible to partition or otherwise use free space on the Time Machine drive as external storage Apple does not recommmend it. Your best solutions are either replace the existing hard drive in your MacBook Pro with a larger capacity drive or add a bus powered external HD. A 1TB USB 2 or 3 drive runs just a bit over $100 and the internal drive about $20 less. In either case remember the Time Machine drive should have two to three times the space of the drive(s) it is backing up.

  • Time Machine Backup to New Hard Drive

    So, I bought a new 1TB hard drive. Now, I only need to backup SOME applications and some music and photos. Can I choose which applications I want to backup with Time Machine? And if so, how do I do it, do I just back it up, replace the hard drives and put the Mac OS X disk in and back up, right?

    Scofield94941 wrote:
    Thank you for your help. I understand. But my OS X started to be very slow after I installed Parallel Desktop and it remains slow even after I uninstalled it, that's why I wanted to restore my new hard drive like Parallel Desktop was never installed.
    Then exclude only the Parallels file(s), which most users do anyway, and back them up separately.
    See the pink box in #11 of [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 the +Time Machine+ forum) for the consequences of omitting system folders and/or apps.

  • Using Time Machine with two external hard drives

    Hi. I use Time Machine to back up the hard disk on my MacBook Pro onto a Western Digital external drive. For secure storage of family photos and things we don't want to lose, I would like to do the following:
    For a week or two, back up my MacBook Pro onto a Western Digital drive. Let's call this WD Drive 1. Then walk downstairs and put WD Drive 1 in a fireproof safe. For the next week or two, back up my MacBook Pro onto a different Western Digital drive. Let's call this WD Drive 2. Then put WD Drive 2 in the safe, take out WD Drive 1, and use WD Drive 1 as the back-up medium for the next week or two. Then keep alternating between WD Drive 1 and WD Drive 2 every couple weeks. This way, I will always have up an to date back-up on the WD drive that is connected to the MacBook Pro, and I also will have a two-week old back-up on the WD drive in the safe in case of a fire or something.
    Can Time Machine be used in this manner, alternating between two different external back-up disks? Will Time Machine "know" when I change external drives and manage all back-up files appropriately?
    Thank you!

    pomme4moi wrote:
    Can Time Machine be used in this manner, alternating between two different external back-up disks? Will Time Machine "know" when I change external drives and manage all back-up files appropriately?
    Yes. Each drive will have an independent set of backups; and each will be a complete "snapshot" of the way your system looked at the time of the backup.
    When you swap drives, the first backup will be somewhat longer, and may involve a "deep traversal," while Time Machine "catches up" with all the changes since the last backup to that drive.
    And try not to go too long between swaps; it's undocumented, so we don't know the exact parameters, but after at least 10 days (apparently), Time Machine may do a new, full backup instead of an incremental one of changes only.
    And you only need to worry about Time Machine deleting old backups if you've deleted the originals from your system; TM will never delete the backups of anything that's still there.
    But . . .
    As MusicWind says, thats' probably not the best strategy. One of the reasons you want dual backups is because no hardware is perfect -- it all fails, sooner or later, right? Similarly, no app is perfect, either. The "works" of Time Machine are more complex than most backup apps; it's pretty reliable, but if you're going to have dual backups, you're probably a bit safer with a different app for your secondary backups.
    I don't know about SuperDuper, but CarbonCopyCloner does have an "archive" feature, where it will keep copies of things you've deleted. I've never used it, so don't know just how it works.
    Also see Kappy's post on Basic Backup, complete with links to the web sites of each product.
    p.s.: Don't try copying Time Machine's dated folders; you'll get a complete copy of your entire system.

Maybe you are looking for