I am trying to restore from a last-but-two Time Machine backup of my Snow Leopard machine to a new Lion machine. However, in preparing the old machine for sale (ie deleting personal info, TM did a couple of backups. I dont want these stripped down ones obviously, so how do I access the later backups? Migraton Assistant only lets me access the latest one as far as I can see.
Many thanks
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
It would be easiest to delete the unwanted snapshots, which you can do in the TM interface by navigating to each one and selecting "Delete Backup" from the action menu (gear icon.) Then start over and use Setup Assistant (not Migration Assistant) to import the data.
It would be easiest to delete the unwanted snapshots, which you can do in the TM interface by navigating to each one and selecting "Delete Backup" from the action menu (gear icon.) Then start over and use Setup Assistant (not Migration Assistant) to import the data.
Thank you so much for the fast answer!
I did see this option, but was scared off by a poster somewhere who said that this would delete ALL of the backups off my TimeMachine HDD. In fact I tried it, but it took quite a while - I got scared! - and I cancelled it...
Have you done this yourself?
Sorry to sound really sceptical - it is my competence not yours that I question!
First, if you're worried about the possibility of losing a backup set, then your backup strategy is inadequate. You will certainly lose those backups, no matter what you do, when the drive hosting them fails, as it will eventually. If you take data safety seriously, you should have at least two complete, independent backups of all your data, one of which is off-site at all times. I suggest you make a second backup now, before doing anything else.
The action I suggested won't delete all the snapshots; only the selected one -- unless something goes wrong, which is always possible. Without adequate backups, nothing you do is safe.
How do I restore from an older time machine backup to a new Mac? SL to Lion
