Quick time machine question.

[originalcliche]

Hello

I currently have a 120GB hard drive in my macbook and want to put in a 500GB one. I have a ton of stuff already installed and don't really want to re-install everything from scratch on the new 500Gb one. Question is can I use Time Machine on an external drive that already has stuff on it? Or do I have to use a freshly formatted one for it to work?

Thanks

 

[dukebound85]

as long as the drive is hfs, you can use one that is already being used

tm creates only a folder on your hdd

 

[MikeTheC]

Perhaps this is changed, but the last I heard you didn't get a bootable disc out of Time Machine.

IMHO, your best bet would be to get a 2.5" HDD enclosure, put the new HDD in it, and then use Carbon Copy Cloner (or another such utility of your preference) to make a literal copy from one HDD to the other. Then, go ahead and swap drives.

If you don't want to buy an enclosure, you could get a USB adapter like this one. I believe these adapters also support 2.5" SATA notebook HDDs, but you'd want to research that before buying one, obviously.

 

[dukebound85]

Perhaps this is changed, but the last I heard you didn't get a bootable disc out of Time Machine.

IMHO, your best bet would be to get a 2.5" HDD enclosure, put the new HDD in it, and then use Carbon Copy Cloner (or another such utility of your preference) to make a literal copy from one HDD to the other. Then, go ahead and swap drives.

If you don't want to buy an enclosure, you could get a USB adapter like this one. I believe these adapters also support 2.5" SATA notebook HDDs, but you'd want to research that before buying one, obviously.

you dont get a bootable copy

good thing about tm is that if you lose something by accident, you can get it back alot easier than cc

i personally use tm and cc for different purposes

 

[wackymacky]

I don't know if it would be quicker than copying everything over to a new disk, but:

If you are replacing the internal drive you can install the OS on to the new drive with OS X install disk and chose "install from back up". This will rebuild your system and filles/apps/preffs just as and where they now, by using the Time-Machine backup sparce-bundle on the external drive.

So your internal main drive will be a replica of the old one, plus however much additional space the drive has.

This seems what you are trying to achieve?

 

[originalcliche]

I don't know if it would be quicker than copying everything over to a new disk, but:

If you are replacing the internal drive you can install the OS on to the new drive with OS X install disk and chose "install from back up". This will rebuild your system and filles/apps/preffs just as and where they now, by using the Time-Machine backup sparce-bundle on the external drive.

So your internal main drive will be a replica of the old one, plus however much additional space the drive has.

This seems what you are trying to achieve?

Thats exactly what I am trying to do. Thank you guys very much for your answers.