Time machine help!

[wankey]

So I have an external harddrive that has a time machine clone of my internal 500gig drive.

However, I just got a huge error on my internal drive, and had to reformat. After using migration assistant, everything is working.

I want to use the time machine backup on the external, how do I do it? When I go to time machine, it finds the free space on the external (69 gigs) and uses that part as a new time machine backup.

I find it very risky to format my old time machine backup right now because that'll only leave me a version of my files in my laptop (with the potentially faulty harddrive)

What should I do? An option for me right now is to find another external, back up a timemachine on there. Then leave that as an archive backup, and then wipe my current external and use it as a regular backup.

 

[MacDawg]

Technically, a Time Machine backup is not a clone (because it isn't bootable), but that is beside the point 🙂

From what I understand, you will have to start a new Time Machine backup now
But I am not 100% certain of that... that is just my understanding
Someone else may know of a way to tag on to the old backup, but I am not aware of how to do that

 

[glennsan]

Time Machine Backup

Technically, a Time Machine backup is not a clone (because it isn't bootable), but that is beside the point 🙂

From what I understand, you will have to start a new Time Machine backup now. But I am not 100% certain of that... that is just my understanding
Someone else may know of a way to tag on to the old backup, but I am not aware of how to do that

Can you use Carbon Copy Cloner to move that over from your internal to the external?

Glennsan

 

[wankey]

Well right now there are 2 copies of my system. I can carbon copy my system onto another external, then wipe this external and use it as a new time machine.