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2010mini

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 19, 2013
4,706
4,809
Hello all,

My wife recently got a Macbook Pro and I use the migration utility to set it up.
I would like to remove her user profile and all associated files of my mini.

But I don't want to loose the time machine backup on my WD external. I would like to keep this, just in case until I get a NAS or another external drive to use as her backup.

is this possible?

TIA
 
Hello all,

My wife recently got a Macbook Pro and I use the migration utility to set it up.
I would like to remove her user profile and all associated files of my mini.

But I don't want to loose the time machine backup on my WD external. I would like to keep this, just in case until I get a NAS or another external drive to use as her backup.

is this possible?

TIA

No problem at all. The TM backup won't be affected by deleting her user account. However, I strongly suggest you get another TM backup started for her on her new machine. I don't think you can link her new machine to the TM backup sitting on the external disk that is plugged in to your machine. One issue is that TM backups over the network are ... spotty. I've lost data on 3 occasions where I depended on network TM backups. Luckily for me CCC and Crashplan are a wee bit better at network backup. I find a NAS TM backup to be a nice convenience for looking for recent versions of a file but the best TM backup is to a Firewire, TB or USB connected external disk.

BTW, it doesn't hurt anything to leave her account and files sitting on your mini for a few weeks (months?) until you know that her new machine is backing up properly.
 
No problem at all. The TM backup won't be affected by deleting her user account. However, I strongly suggest you get another TM backup started for her on her new machine. I don't think you can link her new machine to the TM backup sitting on the external disk that is plugged in to your machine. One issue is that TM backups over the network are ... spotty. I've lost data on 3 occasions where I depended on network TM backups. Luckily for me CCC and Crashplan are a wee bit better at network backup. I find a NAS TM backup to be a nice convenience for looking for recent versions of a file but the best TM backup is to a Firewire, TB or USB connected external disk.

BTW, it doesn't hurt anything to leave her account and files sitting on your mini for a few weeks (months?) until you know that her new machine is backing up properly.

Thanks.

I am going to pick up a 1TB drive for her to back up her MBP and 100GB iPhoto (so can't wait to get that off my Mac!!)
 
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