Reinstall OSX: Basic questions

Hello, I have to reinstall my OSX on a 5 year old iMac 27". I've constantly updated OSX over the years, and it is completely falling apart now. No worries, 5 years is a good time. Before this I had Windows and had to reinstall everything once a year!

I want to format the HD and start afresh. There are two accounts, mine and my wife. I want to completely create a new account (under my iCloud account) for myself, but just use the previous account for my wife.

I have a time machine backup on my QNAP NAS, and an online backup via Backblaze, so I should not have issues returning any data or settings.

1) Am I correct in assuming that for my new account, I can just a new one, and restore individual things such as my emails, favourites for Firefox etc?

2) Am I also correct that I can easily restore the entire account for my wife from Time Machine?

3) What will happen to my Time Machine backup? Will I need to re-back everything up again? Will it retain all my old files for the old Time Machine backups alongside the new?

4) Is there anything I should do for Backblaze prior to this reinstall?

5) How about iCloud? Should I prepare anything there before hand?

Any other advise will be welcome. I want this to be as smooth as possible.

Much appreciation in advance.

1) Yeah, create the new account and restore things from your backup.
2) See no. 1 - same question, really.
3) It will stay on your external drive. Yes, continue doing backups with the new settings. Old files will hang around until "bumped off" by the newer stuff.

I can't advise you on the rest.

Hi there,
Ok, I have formatted the main HD and reinstalled Yosemite. I could connect to my Time Machine backup, but when I do, it sees all the backups on my other HDs, but the original HD which had OSX (and all the data I want to restore) is nowhere to be seen.

Has all this been lost? Please someone help, as it seems impossible to believe it can't be accessed!

Isn't that on the online backup? You had redundancy, should be able to restore things. Then make a new backup on your external drive.

Thanks toMACsh,

If I can't find it, I'll go to my online backup. The Time Machine one though was supposed to be so easy.

Ok, I need some help here regarding Time Machine backups.

My Time Machine back up seems fine for Finder items. I can go back to when the first backup was made, and dates inbetween. This is no longer an issue. It did have problems at first, but I found a way around it to find the data.

However, I can't seem to go back beyond my Time Machine backup since the resintallation of OSX for Mail. Previously I could go back to old mails, but as soon as I started Time Machine backups again, only mail since the backup on the new machine can be seen.

Before I started Time Machine backups again, I could access the old mail. How can I get back to old mail folders? The folder structure is slightly different to how it was before, but surely there must be a way to go back in time to how it was before, especially as normal folder data seems intact.

As for my online backup, it may be possible that way, but it is much slower, and far too slow to find specific mails, so that is really only designed if I lost everything.

However, I can't seem to go back beyond my Time Machine backup since the resintallation of OSX for Mail. Previously I could go back to old mails, but as soon as I started Time Machine backups again, only mail since the backup on the new machine can be seen.

Click to expand...

I'm assuming you're trying to view mail backups the proper way with Time Machine? That is to open the mail program first and then open Time Machine while the mail program was still open. Are you doing it that way?

Before I started Time Machine backups again, I could access the old mail. How can I get back to old mail folders? The folder structure is slightly different to how it was before, but surely there must be a way to go back in time to how it was before, especially as normal folder data seems intact.

Click to expand...

You should be able to view and extract your old mail folders if you're accessing mail from Time Machine as I indicated above. Folder structure should not matter.

chscag said:

I'm assuming you're trying to view mail backups the proper way with Time Machine? That is to open the mail program first and then open Time Machine while the mail program was still open. Are you doing it that way?

Click to expand...

Yes, I have Mail open and the active window.

Time Machine starts, and I can go back in time, but only to when the backup was first started after the clean install. Everything behind that looks blank (I can't go further back, but it has blank pages I can see behind the last usable one).

That said, the timeline at the right of the screen goes all the way back to last year when I bought my backup NAS and began Time Machine backups. I just can't access those dates in mail (I can in Finder though).

chscag said:

You should be able to view and extract your old mail folders if you're accessing mail from Time Machine as I indicated above. Folder structure should not matter.

Click to expand...

That is exactly what I thought, and I can in Finder, just not Mail.

That is exactly what I thought, and I can in Finder, just not Mail.

Click to expand...

Something has changed then in order for Time Machine not to allow access to those dates. You may be forced to have to sort through your on line backup in order to extract those folders you need. Not a pleasant task, I'm afraid.

Unless the Mac has been turned off for a while, it should have got its Time Machine back into shape so that everything is accessible. Have a check and read here and some of the related linked topics:
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18837?locale=en_US

I'm wondering if this issue is related to "creating a completely new account" - like, different username?

gsahli said:

I'm wondering if this issue is related to "creating a completely new account" - like, different username?

Click to expand...

If that were so, or even close, I'd say you're bang on!!

And if so, one should be able to get access with some help, like an old article at:
Access Files from other Time Machine Backups.

or just do a search or other and more recent hits with this for example:
https://www.google.ca/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=dlEhVfHWOsrsiALspoGwDw

Thanks for all the ideas guys. It could be because I created a new account, but I only done this because I formatted the HD, and when reinstalling Yosemite, it suggested I make my new account from my iCloud one (my original account was made long before iCloud came around).

It didn't warn me there would be issues when going back to Time Machine.

Of note (if it helps). Although I can access Time Machine from before the clean reinstall for Finder, it only works if I go to the route folder for the HD. If I start on one of the new folders, it will only go back a couple of days to the first TM Backup after reinstall. But if I then choose the route folder for the HD, I can go way back.

Perhaps there is an equivalent to this "route folder" when looking at Mail. I haven't found one yet if this is the case.

I'll browse through those links, thanks!

Maybe some Time Machine gurus will provide some help for access as I haven't bothered using TM for years and prefer using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) instead. And an app I would recommend as it just works without any of the TM quirks and access and permissions problems.

gsahli said:

I'm wondering if this issue is related to "creating a completely new account" - like, different username?

Click to expand...

Good catch, I overlooked that. That answers the question about not being able to look at those dates from Time Machine. A new account will definitely confuse Time Machine.

pm-r said:

Maybe some Time Machine gurus will provide some help for access as I haven't bothered using TM for years and prefer using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) instead. And an app I would recommend as it just works without any of the TM quirks and access and permissions problems.

Click to expand...

I'm a strong proponent of using CCC, however, only the latest backup is generally available. Time Machine has its uses but as a stand alone backup, I'm not going to rely on only it. That's why I use CCC in conjunction with Time Machine.

Thanks guys,

So, is there a way I can just use Finder to navigate and copy files across from the Time Machine backup? I won't cut or delete anything, as I know that this could corrupt the database.

I am pretty sure the data has to be there, but just that Time Machine's interface can't access it.