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How to keep using existing Time Machine backup after replacing main hard drive

The hard drive in my iMac (Lion) is failing. I cloned it to a new drive and installed it in the iMac. Now the system wants to start fresh with a whole new Time Machine backup.


It seems obvious that there must be a way to keep using the existing Time Machine backup set, but I can't figure out how to do it. Help, please.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2), 20" mid-2007 Aluminum

Posted on Nov 6, 2011 6:05 PM

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Posted on Nov 6, 2011 8:42 PM

If you had done a full system restore from Time Machine, it would have been done automatically. But 3rd-party cloning apps don't leave a "trail" so Time Machine can figure out that the new drive has all the old stuff on it.


Effective with Lion, there is a way to "associate" the new drive with the backups of the old one, but it requires the use of Terminal. See #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. As noted though, this only works on directly-connected backup drives, not backups made over a network.

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Question marked as Best reply

Nov 6, 2011 8:42 PM in response to G Robert Lewis

If you had done a full system restore from Time Machine, it would have been done automatically. But 3rd-party cloning apps don't leave a "trail" so Time Machine can figure out that the new drive has all the old stuff on it.


Effective with Lion, there is a way to "associate" the new drive with the backups of the old one, but it requires the use of Terminal. See #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. As noted though, this only works on directly-connected backup drives, not backups made over a network.

How to keep using existing Time Machine backup after replacing main hard drive

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