Old time machine backups on new computer?

No. You cannot continue with the old backups. Time Machine is machine-specific. What you may need to do is use Migration Assistant to transfer old your stuff to the new Mac. Then start a new TM backup.

Technically, you can. But practically, in this case, you probably don't want to.

TM backs-up whole systems, not just drives and data. If you back up two or more Macs to the same drive or TC, TM will keep them separate. You can view and restore from backups from other machines by holding down the Option key while selecting the TM menubar icon, changing +Enter Time Machine+ to +Browse Other Time Machine Disks.+ Since your old and new Macs are different machines, this would work.

But there's a problem: since the backups are for a different Mac, TM on you new Mac won't automatically delete the old series in the normal fashion. Unless you delete them, they'll be there forever, taking up space you need for new backups.

Worse, it's very tedious to delete them manually. Do not use the Finder, but you can delete the old backups, one at a time, via the TM interface. It's a long, tedious process ... and much longer on a TC.

A. Heimert wrote:
Figured since info on the new machine is basically the same, I could leave it continuing with hte backups.

Basically the same machine or absolutely identical hardware? It may be possible if it is identical. However, you will need a hack to update the MAC address on the old TM backup.

I just finished migrating to my new MacBook Pro, and I tried to access my old backups in the way you described. I "option-clicked" the Time Machine icon and chose "Browse Other Time Machine Disks," but no alternate disks appeared in the popup window. I'm assuming that, by copying all my settings to the new machine using MA, the old computer and the new computer have identical names. Any ideas on how I can access my old backups?

Thanks!

To +Browse Other Time Machine disks+ for TM backups saved on a Time Capsule, you need to mount the sparsebundle first. Open Finder. Click on Time Capsule - > Time Capsule Disk -> yourdesiredbackup.sparsebundle. Double-click. Click Skip when prompted. The sparsebundle will be mounted on your Desktop. Try to browse the TM backup now.

If you don't have a Time Capsule like the OP, start a new post with your setup as I am assuming since you are posting here, you have the same setup as the OP.

It worked!

Thanks a sparsebundle! (har-dee-har-har)