About old time machine backups

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My old 320GB external hard drive isn't working very good anymore after a nasty fall, so i had to buy a shiny new 1TB HD to do my Time Machine backups. I have fresh backup sessions on the new drive but I still want my old backup from the old HD. Is there anyway i can merge the old and new TM backup session files to my new drive? Or even have them both in someway together on the drive (maybe partitioning??)?
Anyone have any ideas?
 

chscag

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There's no way to merge the backups. As far as having them both on the same drive, that's possible. However, you would be wise to experiment with Time Machine to see if you could even access the old backups to do a restore.

Also, I have to ask: Do you really need the old backups? In my humble opinion, when a backup session is very old, it's really of little use. Think about it.... You have a backup that's 6 months old, but in the meantime you've updated Snow Leopard, MS Office 2008, etc, etc.... Do you see what I mean?

Regards.
 
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zacman
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Thanks for the responses guys.
chscag, i have some files in my old backups dating from '07 to early '10 that I need to retain. The programs are no problem but the files are important.
Slydude thanks for the info. it's just what i needed.
 

chscag

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OK. Have fun. Just wanted to make sure you "really" needed those old backups. Use the first method that was suggested by Slydude or even what I suggested will work. Just be careful to not overwrite the older backups when following either.

Regards.
 

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