How does it work with Time Machine to upgrade and migrate to new laptop with smaller hard drive?

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How does it work with Time Machine to upgrade and migrate to new laptop with smaller hard drive?

My old MacBook Pro had a terrabyte hard drive. I'm upgrading to a new MacBook Pro with a small 250 gig hard drive. I migrated as much as I could from the old Macbook, and the entire old hard drive is backed up on Time Machine. Can I continue to use the old laptop Time Machine to access any data that didn't fit on my new Mac, and also start using the same Time Machine backup drive with my new Mac? I want to make sure I don't lose any of the Time Machine data from the old laptop.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Jan 1, 2022 11:41 PM

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Answer 1

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classypiano Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 2, 2022 9:23 PM in response to judysings

That certainly makes sense. As much as I didn’t want to have to get another back up drive, it would be the safest thing to do to make sure I don’t lose anything older from my previous laptop. Thanks for responding!

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Answer 2

judysings

Community Specialist

Jan 2, 2022 5:54 PM in response to classypiano

Thanks for reaching out, classypiano.

It sounds like you want to use the same external drive you used for Time Machine backups on your previous MacBook Pro with your current MacBook Pro, which has less space. We can help.

According to Back up your Mac with Time Machine:

"Time Machine automatically makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup disk is full."

Our concern here is that your new device only has about 25% the storage of your previous one, which will impact what is stored (and subsequently deleted over time). You should also be aware that most troubleshooting for Time Machine has the potential to require erasing the backup disk and starting over, as explained here: If you can't back up or restore your Mac using Time Machine.

Your best bet might just be to use a different drive for Time Machine backups on the new MacBook Pro.

Hope that helps.

Take care.

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How does it work with Time Machine to upgrade and migrate to new laptop with smaller hard drive?

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