Accessing Time Machine from pre-migration?

[ryubyss]

late last night I migrated from a MacBook to MacBook Air use an external hard drive.

perhaps because I failed to click an option, I now cannot access the backups from before I migrated via Time Machine. as far as the MacBook Air knows, my history begins this morning, when I did my first back-up on the MacBook Air.

I can access some files on the external drive, like applications, but a lot of the files, etc. have the little red minus marks on them.

particularly vexing because the external hard drive has its space mostly filled up already, making it pretty wasteful of disk space. will Time Machine go back and erase that older data to make room?

I hope my questions make sense.

 

[Weaselboy]

If you look on the drive you likely have two TM backups on there now. If you started a new one with the new machine, the old one will not be erased on its own.

If you need to see data in there you can try option key clicking the TM menu button then select Browse Other Backup Disks...

 

[ryubyss]

I used option-click as you said and had the option to Browse Other Backup Disks, but everything went as before. the new computer copied the old account but does not recognize the older backed up data as "me".

 

[FreakinEurekan]

You can't "Inherit" the backup after the fact. You can access it, but it'll never be "Yours" if you didn't choose to inherit it during the migration or restore.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14293

 

[ryubyss]

arrr! damn it! why I did not "inherit" the backup drive originally, I will never know.

thank you for your helpful reply though. I might as well have just Googled that...

not that I lost anything that I can't live with losing. what I really want to know, will that mean that Time Machine will never erase the older data as soon as it runs out of room? because if it won't, then the external hard drive will run out of room relatively soon.

 

[Weaselboy]

arrr! damn it! why I did not "inherit" the backup drive originally, I will never know.

thank you for your helpful reply though. I might as well have just Googled that...

not that I lost anything that I can't live with losing. what I really want to know, will that mean that Time Machine will never erase the older data as soon as it runs out of room? because if it won't, then the external hard drive will run out of room relatively soon.

It will never erase that old backup file. You can just delete it in Finder.

 

[ryubyss]

even with the little red minus signs?

 

[Weaselboy]

even with the little red minus signs?

You can manually go through and delete that old data if you want. See the green section on this page. But you will need to do it folder by folder and it is a hassle.

IMO, if you have all your data on the new machine and are not missing anything, I would just turn off Time Machine, erase the backup disk in Disk Util and then turn TM back on and start over.

 

[ryubyss]

IMO, if you have all your data on the new machine and are not missing anything, I would just turn off Time Machine, erase the backup disk in Disk Util and then turn TM back on and start over.

I took your advice. thank you!