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mrmors

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 29, 2011
30
0
Hi, this is what I have and what I want to achieve:

I have a 2011 MBA running Lion.
I've just bought a new rMBP that will have Mavericks.

I want to backup (time machine?) all of my documents, apps, settings etc from my MBA and then move them onto my new rMBP. After that is done, I want to wipe the MBA and give it to the wife, with either Lion or Mavericks, she wont be bothered.

As I know not a lot about time machine and restoring, I'm concerned that it will overwrite my new Mavericks install with the old Lion?

I read that I have 2 choices, setup assistant when I first turn it on, or migration assistant if I've already added a user account and logged in etc. Using both assistants, if I choose 'restore from time machine backup', will they both overwrite the new Mavericks with Lion? I don't want that to happen. I read that time machine backs the whole machine and operating system up? So a restore will overwrite everything?!

Also, if I can get that restore done correctly so that it only copies over my files and apps etc, how do I go about formatting the old MBA? Does it have a restore partition I can boot from to re-install Lion? Or do I have to create a boot USB etc first before or buy one from Apple?


Thanks for any help
 
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