Time Machine - help (how does it work?)

[shindla]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to merge my to Mac's [iMac and MacBook Air] into one. That means I'm selling my MBA and my iMac, and buying the MacBook Pro retina.

I want more or less my personal mac in a new hardware. So I was thinking about taking a Time Machine backup.

My first question.
Time Machine estimates it needs approximately 290 gb of storage space on an external hard drive. Will it be sufficient for me to buy a 320 gb hard drive since the number giving by time machine is only an estimation?
- I plan on buying a separate drive for my MBA later.


Second question.
How does the implementation of time machine backups on a new macbook work. Can it combine two backups (one from iMac; one from MBA) and "merge" them into a new MacBook Pro retina?



Thanks for your help

 

[Weaselboy]

My first question.
Time Machine estimates it needs approximately 290 gb of storage space on an external hard drive. Will it be sufficient for me to buy a 320 gb hard drive since the number giving by time machine is only an estimation?
- I plan on buying a separate drive for my MBA later.

That would work, but it would give you no room for storing versions of files like Time Machine does. For the small price difference, I would get a 500GB to give yourself some room.

Second question.
How does the implementation of time machine backups on a new macbook work. Can it combine two backups (one from iMac; one from MBA) and "merge" them into a new MacBook Pro retina?

There is not way to merge the two into one TM backup set. You will want to get everything imported to the new Mac then create a new TM backup.

What you can do it "inherit" one of the old backups to be used as backup for your new machine.