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Question about Time Machine and my MBP

macuser1232

macuser1232

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 20, 2012
673
7
Hey I was wondering how Time Machine works with my External Hard Drive after I erased my internal HD and reinstalled OS X. How does my external hard drive still recognize my computer and allow me to Enter Time Machine and my back ups? Does it have anything to do with my administrator account?
 
macuser1232 said:
Hey I was wondering how Time Machine works with my External Hard Drive after I erased my internal HD and reinstalled OS X. How does my external hard drive still recognize my computer and allow me to Enter Time Machine and my back ups? Does it have anything to do with my administrator account?
Click to expand...

When you reinstall the OS it should have asked you if you want to restore with TM.
 
Irock619 said:
When you reinstall the OS it should have asked you if you want to restore with TM.
Click to expand...

Yeah I just wanted to move certain files like pictures and documents to my HD. So what happens if you connect an External HD that has backups of one MBP to a different MBP. Will you be able to restore from backups? If not, why?
 
macuser1232 said:
Yeah I just wanted to move certain files like pictures and documents to my HD. So what happens if you connect an External HD that has backups of one MBP to a different MBP. Will you be able to restore from backups? If not, why?
Click to expand...

I believe you can. Just go into system and open time machine, then select any files you want to restore.
 
macuser1232 said:
Thanks.

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My question is, Does Time Machine think my Mac is a new Mac since I erased my HD and reinstalled OS X? If I start to backup will it not erase my old backups from before I erased my HD and reinstalled OS X?
Click to expand...

Your backups are always available unless you physically delete them. When your backup drive gets full of backups it will automatically start to delete the oldest file. Does this answer your question?
 
Irock619 said:
Your backups are always available unless you physically delete them. When your backup drive gets full of backups it will automatically start to delete the oldest file. Does this answer your question?
Click to expand...

Yes but that's not what happens when you back up two different Mac computers with 1 external hard drive. Apparently Time Machine won't delete your other Mac computer's backups if the external drive gets full. It will just delete the old backups of the Mac computer that you are currently backing up on.
 
macuser1232 said:
Yes but that's not what happens when you back up two different Mac computers with 1 external hard drive. Apparently Time Machine won't delete your other Mac computer's backups if the external drive gets full. It will just delete the old backups of the Mac computer that you are currently backing up on.
Click to expand...

It's better to have a seperate drive for each computer anyways. External HDD these days are cheap. I believe only the Apple time capsule can have seperate backups for each computer in your household.
 
macuser1232 said:
Thanks.

----------

My question is, Does Time Machine think my Mac is a new Mac since I erased my HD and reinstalled OS X? If I start to backup will it not erase my old backups from before I erased my HD and reinstalled OS X?
Click to expand...
Which is a slightly different question than the one you asked initially.

How Time Machine "treats" your current computer depends on your choices when Set Up Assistant ran on first restart, which OS you had when you backed up and whether or not that is the same OS as the one you're currently using, the size of the disks etc.

How you continue now also depends on what you want to do with the old Time Machine backups. Do you want to continue backing up to that same set or do you merely want to extract certain files and then discard the old set ... or a different scenario ... .

Perhaps you can start here:
http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html

and look around that site to see what else applies to your situation and your future plans with those backups.

Edit:
This may be something that applies to your situation once you connect the external and try to access previously made backups through Time Machine:
http://pondini.org/TM/E3.html
 
Last edited:
Irock619 said:
It's better to have a seperate drive for each computer anyways. External HDD these days are cheap. I believe only the Apple time capsule can have seperate backups for each computer in your household.
Click to expand...

Really? Just the Time Capsule?
 
bluespaceoddity said:
4. Can I back up 2 or more Macs to the same external HD?
http://pondini.org/TM/4.html
Click to expand...

Yeah I know that I can back up two Macs with Time Machine. But I'm not sure if Time Machine thinks my Mac is a new Mac because I erased my HD and reinstalled OS X or not. So when I make back ups again is it going to back up like it's a new Mac or is it going to back up like I'm on the same Mac(which I am).
 
macuser1232 said:
Yeah I know that I can back up two Macs with Time Machine. But I'm not sure if Time Machine thinks my Mac is a new Mac because I erased my HD and reinstalled OS X or not. So when I make back ups again is it going to back up like it's a new Mac or is it going to back up like I'm on the same Mac(which I am).
Click to expand...

Which was addressed in this part of an earlier reply and link:

bluespaceoddity said:
...
How Time Machine "treats" your current computer depends on your choices when Set Up Assistant ran on first restart,

[...]

Perhaps you can start here:
http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html
[...]
Click to expand...
 
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