Will time machine bacups continue if I don't migrate the account?

Essentially I want to do a clean install of Snow Leopard and then migrate all of my files back. I think there is some garbage on my computer that I don't want, therefore I would rather not migrate my entire user account. However I basically want everything to stay the way it is and want to be able to have access to my old time machine backups as well as tack on new backups. Is this possible? I wanted to know before I attempted anything. Thanks.

clarity23 wrote:
I was planning on using migration assistant to replace my applications and then I was going to manually replace my documents, music, photos, etc. Is thiat a bad idea?
it should work if that's what you want to do.
Will the time machine backups continue under a new user account??
TM backs up the whole computer, not an account. it will continue the backup sequence if you choose to do so as I said. but it will make one big full backup after the reinstall. no way around that.

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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.

Will Time Machine back up two internal hard drives on the same computer?

Hi,
I'm running a Quicksilver G4 - the last of the dual booters - and I have two hard drives installed. One is an 80Gb carrying the OS, apps, and iMovie projects and photos.
The original 60Gb drive is still in there, and has the old OS9 and all my work on there, and my iTunes library.
I currently back up to a MyBook 500Gb firewire external drive. It's partioned into 3 sections. One for long term storage, not backed up. The other two hard drives are backed up completely in the other two partitions, using Retrospect.
Can I use Time Machine two back up these two drives, and what do I need to do to the partions?
I thought it best to ask first.

Thanks Ewan,
What I'd like to do is to abandon Retrospect and use Time Machine only for both the internal drives. The remaining part of the external drive just used for storage and not backing up, I'd like to leave how it is, I just drag and drop there.
On my partions, I've allowed 80Gb and 60Gb partitions, the same size as the drives, though neither drive is more than half full.
When you say I can change the disk volume for backup, do you mean that I have to give Time machine a seperate instruction and schedule for backup? That wouldn't be a problem.

Will Time Machine identify a back up hard drive after main has been erased?

I went to the Genius Bar a couple of days ago and was told that in order to fix some of the problems I was having I should do a achieve and install (or maybe erase and install I can't remember.) Then use Time Machine to restore all the files on my computer except for the system and library folders (since there is a lot of stuff inside them that has been causing errors.)
My question is will Time Machine be able to identify my disk after the achieve and install? I looked at the Time Machine Backup from another start up disk and Time Machine just showed up blank. Is that what would happen if I wiped my drive? Or would that only happen if I completely erased the hard drive and not be an issue if I went with the achieve and install?

The Time Machine disk certainly shouldn't look blank - that could indicate a pro blem with your backups not running when you expect.
When you look at your Time Machine disk you should see a 'Backups.backupdb' dire ctory which contains subdirectories for each Time Machine snapshot.
If you don't see these then your Time Machine isn't backing up and you shouldn't re-install your machine :)
If you do see that, then you should be OK (as long as the subdirectories cover r ecent dates), in which case you can run the re-install - I'd go for a 'clean ins tall' and use the 'Copy my settings from a Time Machine backup' which is one of the options after the first boot.

Can I use my HD wich i alrady have my documents in it? Will time machine de

Will time machine delete them?

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Your best bet is to partition the drive, so TM has it's own, exclusive space. As Thomas says, TM is designed to fill all the space available to it, then it will begin deleting the oldest backups to make room for new ones.
Be aware, though, that TM should have, as a general rule of thumb, 2 - 3 times the space of what it's backing-up, so it can keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you.
He's also right about backing-up the other partition. Time Machine will do that, and it's better than no backup at all, but when (not if) the drive fails, you may lose both copies. So it's best to use a separate drive, or back-them up some other way, like to DVDs.
To partition the drive, see item 6 of the Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of this forum.

Time machine wont continue backing up after restore

hey all,
i had to do a restore after boot camp crashed on me and i lost my 10 Gig of space which i chose to partition. more to the point, i migrated from a time Machine backup to get my mac running the same way it was before i restored only one problem remains... when time machine tries to backup it does not carry on backing up from before i restored, instead it chooses to try and backup everything that is currently on my macs hard-drive (300 Gig) i just want it to backup changed files... just like before.
Other wise everything else is fine, time machine even works and i can go into the time machine interface and restore old files which i have deleted. This is such a nuisance can anyone help?
Thanks.

I'm interpreting what you are saying as a reinstall of the system software followed by a migration of your user data from the Time Machine backup. The better procedure is to restore the whole system from the Time Machine backup (done by accessing the restore option from the menu on the install disk). I believe then you wouldn't have had this issue. The essence of the problem is that Time Machine thinks you have migrated user data to a new system and so is backing up the whole new system. I don't know what you can do about that. It is possible that the fact the system looks physically different (ie you don't have the partitioned hard drive you used to have) is a deal breaker for Time Machine.
But it's certainly worth checking the computer name. You find that by opening System Preferences and clicking the Sharing icon. At the top of the page is a box labelled Computer Name. That needs to be the same as the name when the backups were made. You can confirm the name when the backups were made by going into the backup volume via Finder. There will be a folder called Backups.backupd. Double click that and there is a folder with the Computer Name at the time of the backups. As I say, these have got to be the same for Time Machine to continue to use the same backup directory.

Will time machine do a full backup of external volume (extra storage) after new logic board?

I have a MacBook Pro running leopard, that just had the logic board replaced. I haven't picked it up yet, but I am told that my hard drive and data were not touched.
I have read Pondini's very helpfull info/site, so I know that time machine will want to start a new set of backups.
Here is my question, based on my setup: in addition to the internal HD, I have a firewire drive for additional storage of files. Time machine backs up both volumes to another, larger, FireWire drive
Now, after the new logic board, will time machine make a whole new copy of the external storage drive as well as the internal? Or just the internal?
Basically, I know time machine will think it's on a new machine, but will it treat the external storage as if it were new as well?
I would appreciate any help or advice you can give me. Thanks.

Still no answer? I do have the same trouble on my iMac G5 PPC with 10.5.8: I just replaced the MOB and Time Machine insists to create a new bkup! Attempted with "tmutil" command but doesn't work on my OS...it is really impossible to tell the machine to learn the new address? I DON'T want to believe it!
Tks for any help

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? Only one Sparse Bundle, same name.

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? There is only one sparse bundle but when I enter time machine I don't see my historic backups. I use a synology DS212 for my time machine. Started a new backup which is 218gb but it says 618 gb is occupied therefore it looks like 2 or 3 backups are still on the disk. Before my NAS issues the last backup was in 2014. As you can see there is a second sparse bundle from 2012. Not sure what that is.

This is an old message now, but what happened to me similarly was:
I had a major computer crash and through complicated pathways ended up reinstalling (Mavericks) as a new user (long story).
At least I had good Time Machine backups on an NAS drive (Synology DS212j), or so I thought - when I started Time Machine up again, the old backup file was gone, replaced by a new one using my "new computer" name. The old file was gone both by directly mounting the NAS drive and by clicking "Enter Time Machine".
It's like I had {OldShareName}.sparsebundle and then it was replaced by {NewShareName}.sparsebundle, all of the old info vanished.
(I have spent a week finding old files elsewhere and have completed a satisfactory self-restore. It pays to "archive" [my own variation of] as well as "back-up".)
My belief is that if this were a wired-netword-drive, e.g. plugged right into my iMac with a USB cable, then the old file would have remained.
But this is an NAS drive, connected directly to my Airport wireless router, and I don't know the significance of the fact that it stores its Time Machine backups as "sparsebundle" files rather than simply as plain(er) files.
As usual when things get complicated with computers (not just Apple computers) there was never a warning message. Something like "YOU'RE ABOUT TO DELETE A TIME MACHINE BACK-UP FILE!!!" would have made my life a lot simpler.
BTW, I did try a "restore from Time Machine" option the first thing I had my "new computer" (old hardware, 2009 iMac) up and running, using Migration Assistant, and it ran for many hours and then failed in the wee hours - what that has to do with anything I'm not sure.
I'm not sure that I have a question about this other than "why do these things happen to me?", but it's a warning. Apart from that I've been very happy with the stability and reliability (but not the cost or set-up complexity) of NAS vs. directly-cabled external drives.
Charles

Will Time Machine (TM) reset my backups if I upgrade my internal HD ???

Hi everyone,
I am upgrading my internal HD (160GB HD) on my MBP to a larger one (WD 320GB HD). However, I will be upgrading it while having my system cloned; for this reason, I would like to know, if and when I connect my computer to the TM HD, I will be risking to lose any of my previous backups? Or, will TM recognize my system because I had it upgraded from a clone? Does it make any difference if I backup my information and instal the system from the beginning (Mac OS X DVDs), I mean to TM previous backups?
Any help will be truly appreciated.

I had a problem on the other side, the USB backup drive. TM re-started my backup from scratch after I moved the drive! Here's what happened:
Started with Time Machine backing up to USB hard drive connected directly to MacBook Pro. Had about three months of backups.
Moved USB hard drive to Airport Extreme as a network drive. Mounted drive to MacBook Pro. Since it still had the same name, Time Machine recognized it and started backing up to the drive in its new location (on AEBS).
In this scenario, I would have hoped that my backup would simply continue, but it started over on the day when I moved it to the AEBS!
BEING ABLE TO MOVE FROM USB TO WIRELESS WOULD BE SO GREAT:
For long backups I could connect it directly to my MacBook Pro. Or even take the drive with me while traveling (for backups/restore while away), then return to wireless backups when I get home.
Has anyone had a different experience?
=Emmanuel

Will Time Machine recognize a new RAID 1 boot volume?

I would like to convert the boot volume of my Mac Pro to a RAID 1 mirror (using a second internal hard disk) with Disk Utility. But will Time Machine recognize the RAID mirror as the boot volume it's been happily backing up and continue to back up incrementally? Or will Time Machine regard the RAID mirror as a new volume and therefore do a full backup, consuming quite a lot of disk space on the Time Machine disk? Does anyone here know?
In the past, I've discovered that even if I make a very high quality clone of my boot volume (using Super Duper), Time Machine will fail to recognize the clone and will insist on starting all over again with a full backup. I have not heard a reasonable explanation of why Time Machine does that, considering that the clone should be nearly identical to the original; it's not clear to me how Time Machine "recognizes" a volume. This makes me suspicious about how Time Machine will treat a new RAID 1 volume.
Thanks for any thoughts on this.

No you are right after my TM going slow someone said to download a widget which checks the log and it all ways checks UUID first thing.
P.S. Camelot can you please take a look at my http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1909838 Loop post again; you seemed to forget -thanks

I just got a new MacBook Pro, and I tried to bring across my files from my last mac using time machine. After it was done copying I can't find my files anywhere but the space (about 130gb) has been used on my hard drive. Help please!!

I just got a new MacBook Pro, and I tried to bring across my files from my last mac using time machine. After it was done copying I can't find my files anywhere but the space (about 130gb) has been used on my hard drive. Does anyone know how I can get to them? I did change my user name from 'user' while it was copying, could this have something to do with it?

You don't want to do that by copying.
Your best bet, by far, is to use Setup Assistant. If your Mac is running Snow Leopard, see Using Setup Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard.
If it came with Lion, it's a bit different: Using Setup Assistant on Lion

I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library

I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library?

If you have a considerable photograph and/or movie collection you may want to consider off loading those to the EHD too. Here are Apple's article showing how handle iTunes & iPhoto libraries.
iTunes: library on EHD
iPhoto: How to move the Library to EHD
Roger

Will Time Machine back up iTunes media on a different internal drive

I have my iTunes media on a different internal drive.
Will Time machine back up that data as well?
I have two other internal drives, each 750gb.
Does Time Machine back those drives up as well? Or does it contain itself to the OS disk?

Stephen,
Amazingly, Time Machine will do this by default!! In fact, Time Machine will back up every volume that is present at the time of the initial backup, unless told to do otherwise. I keep my iTunes and iPhoto libraries on a secondary partition of my MBP's hard drive, and Time Machine backed that up automatically.
Your backup will be contained in a "Backups.backupdb" folder on whatever external volume you choose to use for Time Machine. Within this folder, you will find other folders named for the various volumes that are being backed up. As far as I know, there is no limit to how many can be kept.
Scott

HT201250 When getting a replacement Seagate hard drive for my Imac through Apple, will they restore my system to it's current state? Or will I have to do it myself though Time Machine? Will Time machine restore all the programs as well?

Apple has determined that certain Seagate 1TB hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems may fail. These systems were sold between October 2009 and July 2011.
Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) will replace affected hard drives free of charge.
Will this replacement program restore my system to its current state after the new drive is installed? If not, will I have to have all my original disks to re-install all the programs on my current computer, or will Time Machine restore them as well?

Most of them will tell you to backup your data.
Time Machine is nice, but unless you are interested in archival backup, Carbon Copy Cloner is a lot easier to recover from:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1992

I have 2 MacBooks at home that back-up to a Time Capsule. I'd like to buy an external Thunderbolt drive at work to have as an additional back-up. Will Time-Machine support autobackups to 2 different devices?

I have 2 MacBooks (1 Air and 1 Pro) at home that back-up to a Time Capsule. I'd like to buy an external Thunderbolt drive at work to have as an additional back-up (so that were there to be a fire/water damage/etc) I would not lose both the computer and the backup.
Will Time-Machine support autobackups to 2 different devices?
I'd like for it to be able to backup to an external Thunderbolt drive attached to my thunderbolt display when I dock the MacBook Air to it.
Does anyone know if this will occur automatically, or if I will have to manually select backup disk?
thanks

Yes, with Mountain Lion you can do this, but I will leave the explanation to Apple Support Communities contributor Pondini:
34. "Rotating" Time Machine backup disks

Will time machine bacups continue if I don't migrate the account?

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