Time Machine On Macbook ???

Hi

I'm replacing an internal 5400 RPM Drive for a 7200 RPM Drive, instead of making a fresh install with OS X Leopard on the new Drive, is it possible to use Time Machine to preserve all configured settings to preference without having to reset personal settings all over again by a fresh install ?

I have a WD 7200 RPM 1TB External Drive. Is it possible to back up all DATA to the external 7200 Drive using TM in "one DATA dump" then simply export all DATA back to the new 7200 internal Drive ?

Sorry never used TM before.


Macbook 5.1 OS X Leopard 10.5.

You'll be better off cloning the old drive to the new one. Time Machine won't do anything about the OS. It only will restore your user data. Carbon Copy Cloner and Superduper will both do that.

Thanks Stretch.

Time Machine backups aren't directly bootable but they would preserve the settings. In essence you would have to install Lion then load the Time Machine backup to restore the settings.

There is a huge advantage to Carbon Copy Cloner in that it can also clone the Lion recovery partition. I don't know how many other utilities do that. Besides, the developer has a long history of supporting OS X.

Slydude said:

Time Machine backups aren't directly bootable but they would preserve the settings. In essence you would have to install Lion then load the Time Machine backup to restore the settings.

There is a huge advantage to Carbon Copy Cloner in that it can also clone the Lion recovery partition. I don't know how many other utilities do that. Besides, the developer has a long history of supporting OS X.

Click to expand...

I'm basically looking to keep all settings intact such as named files an folders and keep everything in it's original place without having to configure everything again, will TM do this ?

What's the first step.

1 Back up all personal DATA to external Drive using TM.

2 Install OS X on the new Drive.

3 Transfer all DATA from External drive to new Internal Drive ?

Slydude said:

Time Machine backups aren't directly bootable but they would preserve the settings. In essence you would have to install Lion then load the Time Machine backup to restore the settings.

There is a huge advantage to Carbon Copy Cloner in that it can also clone the Lion recovery partition. I don't know how many other utilities do that. Besides, the developer has a long history of supporting OS X.

Click to expand...

Thanks Slydude.

musicmad said:

I'm basically looking to keep all settings intact such as named files an folders and keep everything in it's original place without having to configure everything again, will TM do this ?

What's the first step.

1 Back up all personal DATA to external Drive using TM.

2 Install OS X on the new Drive.

3 Transfer all DATA from External drive to new Internal Drive ?

Click to expand...

Instead of TM, use Carbon Copy Cloner, and you can skip step 2. Back up the entire drive using CCC. Swap in the new drive. Boot off the external drive that has the just created back-up. Then CCC the external back to the internal. Continue using computer as if nothing happened.

Stretch said:

Instead of TM, use Carbon Copy Cloner, and you can skip step 2. Back up the entire drive using CCC. Swap in the new drive. Boot off the external drive that has the just created back-up. Then CCC the external back to the internal. Continue using computer as if nothing happened.

Click to expand...

Are you saying TM will only back up personal DATA (Music Movies Photos Documents) but will NOT back up OS X and third party applications such as iLife and iWork ? (meaning they will need to be installed manually)

Whereas CCC will do the both without the need for disc installations ?

If going with TM and having to manually install the OS and apps, will all their settings need to be configured "all over again" ?

Not exactly. TM will back up any files on your Mac's hard drive (apps, system files, data, etc). It won't back up a Windows partition or any files that you exclude.

The main difference is that you cannot boot from a Time Machine backup. In an emergency you have to boot from a CD or recovery partition and then let the Time Machine backup restore all of the files. With an actual clone from something like Carbon Copy Cloner you can boot from the clone. The downside is you have to remember to run cloning programs.

Many of our member use a combination of Time Machine and a cloning program. Here's a description of my current backup routine http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-apps-games/276289-carbon-copy-cloner.html#post1411332

You can boot from a Time Machine backup.

Are you sure about that? Can you provide a reference? When I say Time Machine backups are not bootable I mean that you cannot under normal circumstances boot from a Time Machine backup.

AFAIK the only way to come close to booting from a TM backup would be to either:

1. Boot from an install DVD/recovery partition then restore from the Time Machine backup, or
2. Boor from a "clone" or drive that contains a minimal OS install then restore from the backup.

Either way the Time Machine backup is not directly bootable.

G-Mo said:

You can boot from a Time Machine backup.

Click to expand...

No, you can not. You can, however, boot from a SuperDuper clone or a Carbon Copy Cloner clone.