Time Machine Full Backup

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Level 1

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Time Machine Full Backup

I've been backing up on Snow Leopard for some time now, and I was wondering if there was a way for me to do a full backup of my entire Macbook hard drive.

Late 2007 Macbook, Mac OS X (10.6.1), 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Posted on Dec 12, 2009 2:37 PM

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Answer 1

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V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Dec 12, 2009 2:39 PM in response to grampy7

that's what Time machine is doing already unless you excluded some things from backups. if so, clear your exclusion list in TM system preferences->options.

Message was edited by: V.K.

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Answer 2

grampy7 Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 12, 2009 2:48 PM in response to V.K.

no, but i think i deleted some of the early backups a while ago when i has having storage issues, i just want to do a full backup just in case, is there any way for me to do that?

The way i though Time Machine worked was it did a full backup to start and then just backed up the changes that had been made, and by deleting the first backups I did I erased the 'bedrock' that i had been building my backups on since then... am i wrong?

Message was edited by: grampy7

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Answer 3

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Dec 12, 2009 2:52 PM in response to grampy7

deleting early backups makes no difference. there is no need to do it "just in case". every TM backup is complete and fully independent of others. deleting one backup has zero effect on any other backups. your existing backups are all full already. the only way to restart backups is to use a different backup hard drive or erase the one you've been using thus far. but there is no need to do that as i said.

But you can force Time Machine to run a full hard drive scan on the next backup and make sure that when it backs up next time nothing is missing. to do that reboot once in safe mode. reboot and hold shift at the chime. this will boot you in safe mode. then reboot normally and do a TM backup. it will take a long time because TM will be checking everything.

Message was edited by: V.K.

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Answer 4

grampy7 Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 12, 2009 2:50 PM in response to V.K.

awesome, thank you. i was worried for a while there.

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Answer 5

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Dec 12, 2009 2:52 PM in response to grampy7

see the edit to my last post.

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