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Bruck · Jun 5, 2008, 02:02 PM

Ok,

I have a 500gb and 320gb lacie sitting here. The 500 is brand new. One of them will become my "time machine"

I have had redundant data (on 6 month delay) for a long time, but I think its time to let leopard keep me covered by the hour.

My Macbook Pro has a 160gb 7200 rpm Internal drive. Its usually almost full (20 - 30gb free space).

In the next 2 to 3 years, I'll surely upgrade my laptop so that I can have a bigger internal drive. At that point, I'll want to use a 500 or bigger time machine drive...

but here is my question....

how easy is it to manipulate my time machine data.

For example, can I

Setup the 320 as time machine, wait 2 years - buy new mac, move time machine info to a new external, pick up where I left off?

I have gotten the impression that time machine data can't easily be moved around and re-attached to the computer - is this true? What happens in an Upgrade scenario, if you use the time machine migration feature and just move everything over to your new machine?

Does that even work that well? Are you forced to do a full re-install of everything, and start time machine from scratch, effectively losing your time machine history?

Thanks.

mduell · Jun 5, 2008, 05:51 PM

Moving the Time Machine backup is pretty easy with standard file copy tools.

After restoring your data from Time Machine to a new computer, that new computer will have a new Time Machine archive, but you're welcome to keep the old Time Machine archive on your external disk also.

Bruck · Jun 5, 2008, 07:24 PM

when you say keep the old Time Machine Archive on your external disk - will this file be accessable from time machine software? can you view it - or get to old files?

Also from what I've read, you are not supposed to store anything on a time machine volume, wouldn't moving an inactive archive to an active time machine drive be against the "rules" ?

Thankz

mduell · Jun 5, 2008, 08:48 PM

Probably not. You can view it with Finder or Terminal.

WTF rules? You can put whatever files you want on a disk used for TM.

Bruck · Jun 5, 2008, 09:44 PM

Last time a friend of mine had a randomly corrupted Time machine archive, when i did research as to why, one of the theories is that you should not be storing files on the time machine drive in the same partition.

besson3c · Jun 5, 2008, 10:09 PM

Using standard file copy tools might give you headaches depending on what you use, because IIRC on the root level of a TM volume are some invisible files internal to TM which would be missed in a Finder copy.

mduell · Jun 6, 2008, 02:19 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Using standard file copy tools might give you headaches depending on what you use, because IIRC on the root level of a TM volume are some invisible files internal to TM which would be missed in a Finder copy.

I wouldn't consider Finder to be a tool for files I actually want copied.

besson3c · Jun 6, 2008, 03:07 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

I wouldn't consider Finder to be a tool for files I actually want copied.

Me neither... I've always wondered why file operations in the finder take so much longer to complete than through the command line (even with the verbose flag on).