Time Machine Backups

[Huntn]

Lets say you have a G5 tower, and you have 10.5 backed up (the System partition) with Time Machine and at some point in the future the G5 dies, you decide it's time to upgrade to a newer Mac maybe a tower or a iMac. How useful will that Time machine backup be?

My impression is that the TM backup is only really useful if you are trying to restore the same computer to it's once-was state. If you are going to get a new computer, with most likely a newer OS, it's not going to help too much. Is that correct?

I'm focused more on restoring a System, not just saving important files. But even that is a good point to cover. Lets say you have a bunch of files on a TM backup. How would you recover them if switching over to a new computer? Is there a way to view the content of a TM backup without going through a restore process?

Thanks!

 

[maflynn]

If you can live without your data, documents and files, then its not that useful.

Seriously its a backup of your system. I wouldn't do a full system restore with TM on a new MBP because you're probably dealing with different OSs at this point but that doesn't mean you cannot retrieve your data.

 

[Huntn]

If you can live without your data, documents and files, then its not that useful.

Seriously its a backup of your system. I wouldn't do a full system restore with TM on a new MBP because you're probably dealing with different OSs at this point but that doesn't mean you cannot retrieve your data.

I do backup my files. I want to be sure I understand TM's functionality.

Good for System backup- not so good if your old machine dies and you move to a new machine with a new OS. Basically you'd end up doing a clean install and have to restore your applications.

Is it good for file restoration if your computer dies and you end up getting a new computer? Can you access TM backups for file retrieval?
Thanks!

 

[Eric S.]

Migration Assistant will restore portions of a TM backup. That's what I would use to restore user data if setting up a new system.

 

[Cinematographer]

Can you access TM backups for file retrieval?
Thanks!

Yes you can. It takes some time if you don't know at what time in the past you had the file and then deleted it. But otherwise it's easy to browse the folder structure of the TM backup, even without launching the application itself.