how to use Time Machine properly?

[Reach9]

Hey guys

Recently my MBP 13" that i got in mid 2010 has started lagging pretty badly. Even with MacKeeper's help, maybe it has some bug or something?
I'm thinking of doing a complete reinstall, and i've backed everything up on Time Machine.

I was thinking, could i move some files that i have from now to when i bought the laptop (August 2010)? If so, how do i do that?

Or if i chose to do a fresh reinstall of the OS and i pick August 2010 as my restore point, will i lose everything that comes after it?

What would be the best thing to do? I'd appreciate any help!

 

[Jolly Giant]

I'd appreciate any help!

great !

start here.

 

[maflynn]

Its easy because apple makes it easy.

Step 1. Get/connect an external drive to your mac
Step 2. allow TM to use the drive when prompted or configure it to use it in the preference pane.
Step 2a (optional) select any folders you wish to exclude from the backup
Step 3. allow it to back up

Its as easy as that. Being an apple product you really have little choice in the configuration while some people may chafe under the lack of configuration. It makes setting up and using pretty much idiot proof.

 

[robgendreau]

Uh, it seems the OP wants to know whether to restore from an existing backup on TM, correct?

If you reformat your main drive and re-install system software, you can restore from your TM backup.

But before you do that you should figure out why your system is slowing down. Simply picking a point in the past at random to return to won't help unless you get lucky. You could march forward through several iterations of your system to see what got it to slow down but that's going to be an extremely slow process.

So I'd be more specific about your machine's lack of performance and try to diagnose what's going wrong before you go to all the hassle of replacing your system software.

Rob

 

[Reach9]

Uh, it seems the OP wants to know whether to restore from an existing backup on TM, correct?

If you reformat your main drive and re-install system software, you can restore from your TM backup.

But before you do that you should figure out why your system is slowing down. Simply picking a point in the past at random to return to won't help unless you get lucky. You could march forward through several iterations of your system to see what got it to slow down but that's going to be an extremely slow process.

So I'd be more specific about your machine's lack of performance and try to diagnose what's going wrong before you go to all the hassle of replacing your system software.

Rob

You're right Rob, I really don't know what's wrong and i feel that i'm being denied that speed everyone else's MacBook Pro has.

If you could help me out that would be great since i'm a new Mac owner. I posted a thread here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1126190/