Time Machine/Restore OS X question.

[rp2000]

Thinking of re-installing OS X on my MacBookPro (16 months old).

I have taken Time machine backups of it, semi-regularly. My Plan is to take one more "newest" backup and then re-install OS X.

The next bit I am unsure about. From what I read Time Machine only backs up "User Data:" and this is used, with the Original OS X disc/files to restore your machine. This is done during the OS X re-installation.

What I would prefer to do, is a clean install of OS X and then selectively restore files/applications. Is this possible? What will happen to my Time Machine Volume once I plug it back into a new fresh OS X installation? Will I be able to see the files etc? (I have only ever plugged the 250gb USB HDD I use into my Macbook Pro so have no idea how it shows up on machines that it is not a backup of).

Anyone here got experiences of re-installing Leopard in conjunction with Time Machine?


rp2000

 

[Sareth]

You should be able to point time machine to the existing backup as long as you haven't changed the name of the hdd then go into time machine and selectively restore the files. I've done it like this once before.
Admittedly the last time I did it I manually copied mail etc. to an external hdd and just pulled them back in instead of using Time Machine, it was quicker than jumping in and out of Time Machine for what I wanted to do.

*edit* mail is a tricky swine to do manually though.

 

[JUMPURS]

Why are you wanting to do a clean install anyway?

 

[MuGeN]

if you restore from time machine your computer should technically be exactly the same as the backup time, however in my experience it is never 100% accurate...

what i tend to do is use the time machine drive as a standard external drive and drag what i want out of it... it shows up (when connected as a normal non-time-machine drive) in exactly the same way as if you looked at it when it is set as the time machine so you can just drag and drop anything you like out of it... from any date and time

this works as all the files are (theres a word for this, kindof a fancy version of an alias) so its no problem at all

once i'm confident i have retrieved everything i want, i format the drive then set it as the new time machine, although you can continue it from where it left of but a lot of files will be changed and you'd lose a lot of space...

 

[rp2000]

if you restore from time machine your computer should technically be exactly the same as the backup time, however in my experience it is never 100% accurate...

what i tend to do is use the time machine drive as a standard external drive and drag what i want out of it... it shows up (when connected as a normal non-time-machine drive) in exactly the same way as if you looked at it when it is set as the time machine so you can just drag and drop anything you like out of it... from any date and time

this works as all the files are (theres a word for this, kindof a fancy version of an alias) so its no problem at all

once i'm confident i have retrieved everything i want, i format the drive then set it as the new time machine, although you can continue it from where it left of but a lot of files will be changed and you'd lose a lot of space...

Ideally this is what I want to do. I had a quick browse of the disk and I can see all the snapshots, ordered by date.
I have not drilled down folders, but I guess what you are saying is every single folder looks to contain every single file, but in actual fact there are "pointers" to different versions of the file etc (incremental backups in effect). Now I see the file structure is viewable as a USB drive, i can pull out the files I want myself.

Ideally it would just be Music, Downloads, Applications, Pictures I would restore, selectively, over time.

Cheers for the help, gonna try this later today.

You should be able to point time machine to the existing backup as long as you haven't changed the name of the hdd then go into time machine and selectively restore the files. I've done it like this once before.
Admittedly the last time I did it I manually copied mail etc. to an external hdd and just pulled them back in instead of using Time Machine, it was quicker than jumping in and out of Time Machine for what I wanted to do.

*edit* mail is a tricky swine to do manually though.

Mail isn't a big issue for me. I will remember to set the machine name the same so I have the option to drag back my files through either Time Machine or Finder (as the other guy suggested).


rp2000