Fresh install and time machine

[smickle1111]

Hi,

Prob a silly question but i have all my data backed up on a 1 TB ext drive as a time machine set up.

if i do a clean instal of os X i can access all my data via time machine?

Cheers...

 

[j-a-x]

Yeah, there's no issue with accessing your time machine backups after doing a clean install (just don't format your backup drive!!). That's sort of what Time Machine is for.

What I am thinking of doing is making sure everything is backed up via Time Machine and then doing a complete format of the HD and clean install of SL. Then I will transfer my documents folder and some specific settings (safari bookmarks for example) but I don't want to restore everything. I think it's good to clean out old preferences files, Application Support files, plugins, etc that I haven't used in a while and this is a good way to do it.

I will probably delete all of my past Time Machine backups and keep just the most recent backup of my drive to save space on my backup drive and then start a new backup of my newly formatted Leopard drive and keep the old one for a few months to make sure there is nothing I am missing.
(you can just drag old time machine backups to the trash and keep the most recent ones)

I know that seems like a lot of work but I think it's worth it to format your computer and this is a good chance to get rid of lots of crap I don't use.

 

[okrelayer]

anyone know how to do this? How to install snow leopard fresh? The SL installer just has "upgrade" really wondering.

i plan to do the same. Time machine back up one last time. clean install snow leopard, then manually drag over my movies, photos, music, document files

 

[smickle1111]

Cool

Thanks for that mate,

I plan do do the clean instal with leopard.... then use the snow leopard to upgrade.

Is that the best option...

PS I have had my MBP for over a yr and don't miss windows at all!!!

 

[okrelayer]

im thinking thats the best option to. I wish there was a little easyier way.

 

[j-a-x]

I think you use Disk Utility (after booting from the installation disk) to erase and install SL.

 

[jw2002]

After a clean & install the next Time Machine backup will be enormous. Even if you restore non-system files from the previous backup, those files will no longer have the same inode value as they did during previous backups and will get backed up again. In other words, if you restore 50 GB of data from Time Machine, then those 50 GB will get backed up again the next time that Time Machine runs. Operations like clean & install completely wipe the low level file system, and Time Machine must assume the worst and re-backup everything, regardless of whether or not an identical file already resides in a previous backup.

 

[smickle1111]

HMMMMM

So whats the best method to do all this.. anyone done it or links to best way??

fun fun

 

[j-a-x]

I know the next backup after a clean install will be huge, that's why I want to delete all of the time machine backups except the most recent one to save space. And then I will get rid of the final "old" backup after a month or so.

Also I should add that SL takes up way less space than Leopard, so the first SL backup after a clean install should be a lot smaller than the first Leopard backup after a first install.

 

[hhaeschen]

anyone know how to do this? How to install snow leopard fresh? The SL installer just has "upgrade" really wondering.

i plan to do the same. Time machine back up one last time. clean install snow leopard, then manually drag over my movies, photos, music, document files

i haven't tried with the SL upgrade disk yet. But when I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard the disk also had only 'upgrade' at first. After installing 10.5 though, it showed all the other options like 'archive & install' and 'erase & install'.
so i guess, you're gonna have to upgrade first and then do the fresh install. kind of annoying but it should work.

 

[CWallace]

anyone know how to do this? How to install snow leopard fresh? The SL installer just has "upgrade" really wondering.

When you boot the SL installer application and choose your install language, up in the menu bar you can launch Disk Utility to erase your HDD partition prior to install.



As for Time Machine, you can either perform a restore from the SL installer application (the "Transfer My Mac" screen) or you can boot into SL and access your Time Machine store and manually copy the data over. I'd recommend you don't allow SL to use your current TM store until you've done the restore.

I also noticed that when I chose my existing TM store as the new SL TM store, it noted the drive lacked the space to perform an initial backup, so it looks like SL's TM doesn't use Leopard's TM store, but creates a new one. So once I verified all the data I wanted was copied over and working, I just erased the disc and pointed SL's TM to it and it performed a new full initial backup and has been incrementing it since.