How will upgrading Mac Book Pro internal hdd affect Time Machine backups?

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How will upgrading Mac Book Pro internal hdd affect Time Machine backups?

I have an OWC hdd upgrade kit for my late 2008 MPB. Was going to put the new drive in an enclosure, clone my old drive to it using CCC, and then take out the old drive from the computer replacing it with the new one. I also have an external drive that I've been using for time machine back ups ( my back ups go back several years).

I'm worried about what will happen to the external time machine drive. Will I still have access to all those years of back ups? Will the drive simply see my new internal hdd as a "continuation" of the backing up process, or will I run into some problems (unless I take some preemptive steps)? My research has led to recommendations involving the Terminal, but I'm not tech savy and can't be sure of that kind of workaround.

I guess my question is really just "what will happen with all those years of time machine backups"?

MacBook Pro (Late 2008), Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Aug 23, 2013 4:36 PM

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Answer 1

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Pondini

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Aug 23, 2013 5:48 PM in response to J.Mill

J.Mill wrote:

I have an OWC hdd upgrade kit for my late 2008 MPB. Was going to put the new drive in an enclosure, clone my old drive to it using CCC, and then take out the old drive from the computer replacing it with the new one. I also have an external drive that I've been using for time machine back ups ( my back ups go back several years).

On Leopard, the new drive will be backed-up separately. The first backup will be a full one -- everything.

The older backups will be preserved, but are treated as being from a disk that's no longer connected. You can see and restore from them via the procedure in #E3 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

If you upgrade to Snow Leopard first, however, do new backups, and put your data on the new drive by doing a full restore from a Snow Leopard TM backup, Time Machine should change the backups so they look like they were made from the new disk. If so, the next backup will be only of whatever's new or changed, and all backups will appear together when you Enter Time Machine. But sometimes that doesn't happen, so it's like Leopard's behavior.

If you upgrade to Lion, it's much more likely to work, and if it doesn't, there's a way to do it manually.

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Answer 2

J.Mill Author

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Aug 23, 2013 6:19 PM in response to Pondini

1. Upgrade to Snow Leopard.

2. Do a Time Machine backup to my external drive.

3. Take out my old internal hdd from the mpb and put in the new internal hdd (instead of using the OWC kit/enclosure and CCC cloning software).

4. Do a full restore from my external TM backup drive to the new internal hdd.

If I go this route you are saying the TM backups should appear together as though from one disk. And that if I upgrade to Lion, the chance is greater that this will be the outcome.

I would rather not upgrade now. My disk is on its last legs and I just want to clone or restore to a new drive ASAP. I also run alot of audio plugins and stuff, and would rather upgrade the OS AFTER the new disk is put in (that way I'll have time to prepare/organize projects without the everpresent fear of disk failure.

So you are saying I will still have access to my old TM backups, but that they'll just be separate? As long as I'l have acess it's ok. Also, I'll have to put up with TM backing up the entire new drive--that blows.

My only question now is, do you think I should clone the old internal hdd to the new hdd with the owc kit (I've got the firewire 800 enclosure), or do you think I should just place the new hdd directly in the MPB and do a full restore to it from my external TM drive?

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Answer 3

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Aug 23, 2013 6:32 PM in response to J.Mill

J.Mill wrote:

. . .

If I go this route you are saying the TM backups should appear together as though from one disk.

Usually, yes.

And that if I upgrade to Lion, the chance is greater that this will be the outcome.

Yup.

I would rather not upgrade now.

Your call; I wasn't necessarily recommending it just for this purpose (since you didn't say why you're replacing the drive), but if you were going to upgrade anyway, it might be worthwhile doing that first.

My disk is on its last legs and I just want to clone or restore to a new drive ASAP.

In that case, yes, probably best to do that while you can.

So you are saying I will still have access to my old TM backups, but that they'll just be separate? As long as I'l have acess it's ok.

Yes. It's just a bit tedious to get to them. And, eventually, all the old ones will be deleted.

Also, I'll have to put up with TM backing up the entire new drive--that blows.

Assuming there's enough space. The new backup will require nearly the size of the data on the disk, plus about 20% for workspace, so TM may have to delete a lot of old backups to make room.

My only question now is, do you think I should clone the old internal hdd to the new hdd with the owc kit (I've got the firewire 800 enclosure), or do you think I should just place the new hdd directly in the MPB and do a full restore to it from my external TM drive?

On Leopard, it doesn't matter. The end result will be the same.

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