Just Sold MacBook, how to back it up to load on new one

[lasuther]

In anticipation for the new MacBook release, I decided I would put up my MacBook (Gen A) on ebay just to see what happened. Strangely enough, it sold in a couple days. Now I need to back up my laptop so I can load it back the new MacBook when I buy it.

I have a 500GB Time Capsule and a iMac with 350GB hard drive. I have the hourly back ups for Time Machine.

Can I just buy a new computer and go to the Time Machine back up of the old MacBook and force it on the new computer? Is there a better/easier way to back up the old MacBook to load onto a new computer?

I'm going to be so pissed off if Apple doesn't release a new Al MacBook .

 

[r0k]

In anticipation for the new MacBook release, I decided I would put up my MacBook (Gen A) on ebay just to see what happened. Strangely enough, it sold in a couple days. Now I need to back up my laptop so I can load it back the new MacBook when I buy it.

I have a 500GB Time Capsule and a iMac with 350GB hard drive. I have the hourly back ups for Time Machine.

Can I just buy a new computer and go to the Time Machine back up of the old MacBook and force it on the new computer? Is there a better/easier way to back up the old MacBook to load onto a new computer?

I'm going to be so pissed off if Apple doesn't release a new Al MacBook .

You should be able to restore directly from the Time Capsule to your new machine when you first turn it on. I would still manually back up your home directory to the 350 gig drive on your iMac "Just In Case". You can never be too safe. You might wind up waiting a few months for the new Macbook to come out so there is no chance to transfer machine to machine by firewire. So make sure your backup is a good one before sending away your machine.

To prep your machine, I suggest deleting everything in your home folder (after turning off Time Machine). Then do "secure empty trash". Lastly do a wipe and install from the OS cd that came with your machine. Make sure to allow sufficient time to do the transfer. If you are using firewire, you can get 20 gig done in a few hours. The same is true for gigabit ethernet. But if you are using wifi or 100Mbit ethernet, allow about 10 times longer or the better part of a day for copying files around.

 

[kalex]

just to be on the safe side, if you have an external disk, use super duper and clone your macbook disk before you ship it out. in case your time machine fails to restore or something else. better be safe than sorry