Time machine question for new Retina iMac

[jph1207]

HI...new to this forum and a new mac user...been a windows guy forever..i bought a new 27" imac a few weeks ago from best buy..then the retinas were released and I had one day to return it to best buy or my 30 days was over...whew!! returned it and ordered a new retina...i made a time machine backup of my imac before i returned it...i had upgraded to yosemite before the back up if that matters....when my new retina arrives (still shows order processing on apple store) can i just restore the time machine backup and be good to go? I did spend a few weeks customizing my first mac with bookmarks, files, mail etc etc...would love to at least be "back where i left off!!"

 

[bad1550]

HI...new to this forum and a new mac user...been a windows guy forever..i bought a new 27" imac a few weeks ago from best buy..then the retinas were released and I had one day to return it to best buy or my 30 days was over...whew!! returned it and ordered a new retina...i made a time machine backup of my imac before i returned it...i had upgraded to yosemite before the back up if that matters....when my new retina arrives (still shows order processing on apple store) can i just restore the time machine backup and be good to go? I did spend a few weeks customizing my first mac with bookmarks, files, mail etc etc...would love to at least be "back where i left off!!"

Yes, you can choose time machine backup when you start your new retina. It will clone your previous iMac.

I just did this yesterday and it worked great.

 

[jph1207]

thanks so much...i read somewhere that i should do this on the very first boot as opposed to after system is up and then use time machine app?

 

[rkaufmann87]

thanks so much...i read somewhere that i should do this on the very first boot as opposed to after system is up and then use time machine app?

That is correct, it's called Setup Assistant. When you boot any new Mac it starts Setup Assistant, it will get to a point where it asks if you migrating from another Mac, select yes and then connect the TM drive to the new machine and follow the on-screen prompts. It's pretty darned simple. You can read more about it in:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5872

This article is for Mavericks but the instructions for Yosemite are identical. It's REALLY simple. When you connect the TM drive use a USB connection, don't worry about the speed it shouldn't take more than 1-2 hours at the VERY most, considering the age of your old machine and that you likely didn't have much on it the migrations will probably be much much faster.

 

[jph1207]

sweet....thanks... it's a little tempting to go get a retina today since you can pick one up at an apple store now!! base model only and I ordered a 4Ghz, 295x GPu & 16GB mems...so i'll wait..but still so tempting since myorder from apple still just says processing..ordered it on the 18th

 

[jph1207]

sweet....thanks... it's a little tempting to go get a retina today since you can pick one up at an apple store now!! base model only and I ordered a 4Ghz, 295x GPu & 16GB mems...so i'll wait..but still so tempting since myorder from apple still just says processing..ordered it on the 18th