08-27-2009, 09:08 AM

My current setup:

• OS X 10.5
• Plenty of backups in Time Machine

What I plan on doing:

1. A full wipe of my local disk
2. Fresh install of Snow Leopard
3. Bring my documents/music/etc. back over from Time Machine

Where I get confused/concerned:

After the wipe/install, I'll plug in the external Time Machine disk, and I don't know what to expect ... Will the new install of S.L. start to wipe the external drive just so it can back itself up (effectively deleting all of my saved stuff, only to replace it with the minimal S.L backup(s))?

Or, will I be prompted something along the lines of: "OS X recognizes files on a Time Machine disk you just connected. Do you want to pull personal files/documents from it, onto your local disk?"

Or, will nothing happen, and I simple browse the file-contents of the external Time Machine disk, and manually copy > paste those files/documents from the Time Machine disk to me local disk?


As you might imagine, I've used Time Machine quite a bit, but never between to versions of an operating system; I've no idea what to expect when I plug it into the fresh install of Snow Leopard.

Thanks for your time and advice!

08-27-2009, 10:40 AM

As a quick follow-up, I believe the last few paragraphs of this LifeHacker article answer my questions: Prep Your Mac for Snow Leopard - Snow leopard - Lifehacker

If anybody has additional tips/insight, I'd love to hear it.