If my Mac was to go dead or get stolen, how does my back up hard drive with Time machine kick in?
Asked by
delta77 (
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)
December 4th, 2009
In other words, my Mac is gone. I go to the Apple Store and purchase a new Mac. Now can I just hook up my external back-up hard drive to my new Mac and start as if I had my stolen computer? What actually happens? Has this ever happened to you? The reason I ask is because I always back my whole computer up with Time Machine and my backup hard drive, but then I wonder how the restore process actually works if I got a new Mac or if my current Mac just dies out and needs to be installed from a blank slate. Can you literally use Time Machine to install all your files, preferences, programs, etc. as if it never happened?
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sorry microsoft user but with microsoft your external “back up hard drive” just stores the information you send to it so once you hook it up to a new computer you just transfer the files back over or just copy them to the new hard drive
Mac User, this happened to me, yes Time Machine works as advertised. On some apps you may need to re-authorize serial numbers and register the software but otherwise it should work. You’ll need to install the OS from the installer disc or recovery disc, but basically it’s as simple as starting up the computer from the installer an follow the screen prompts for restoring from time machine.
It will look like it did from the last backup, anything afterward will be lost.
http://i.imgur.com/iz3i1.png
Migration Assistant will help a bit. But it isn’t perfect.
I would suggest making two partitions on the external drive. One that is the size of your internal and the rest for Time Machine. Then use SuperDuper! to clone a bootable copy of your internal hard drive.
That is how I roll.
Even I, the techno-drudge here, use SuperDuper on an external hard drive to back up Time Machine.
Just bought a new iMac last week and when booting it up it asks if you want to restore from a Time Machine backup. I just restored over my network from the hard drive plugged into my Airport Extreme and it is just like it was before on my previous computer including everything from apps to web browsing history, preferences, etc. Very easy process.
What is the difference between SuperDuper and Time Machine? are they supposed to be used together or separately?
SuperDuper creates an exact mirror image, bootable backup of your hard drive. Time Machine is not bootable, but you can restore all your data from it after you reinstall the OS. Time Machine also creates versions of your data. So you can go back last week or a month ago or 2 hours ago and recover just one file that you deleted. SuperDuper only has one backup from one point in time.
Both have strengths and weaknesses.
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