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Help restoring Time Machine back-up to old machine

I have a Time Machine question. (have been helping a friend upgrade his old iMac, and then set up a new iMac)


Summary:


- Old iMac was on 10.6.8 ; It always did Time Machine backups.


- We updated the old iMac to Yosemite 10.10.1

(Introduced lots of software incompatibilities)


- Then he decided to get a new iMac with Yosemite.

We used Migration Assistant to transfer the user account from the old iMac to the new iMac.


*Here's the mistake: Connected the old Time Machine backup drive to the new iMac and ran a Time Machine backup. It gave us a warning that the backup drive would no longer be able to be used by the old iMac. But we expected to retire the old iMac.


- Now, unexpectedly, the user wants to restore the old iMac to the 10.6.8 version just before the Yosemite upgrade.

I tried connecting the TimeMachine backup drive to restore the system to that date, but it indeed says it cannot use the drive on this old iMac any more.


Browsing for solutions suggests this:


- Take the old iMac to an Apple Store and have them "Erase and Re-install" 10.6.8


- Then use Migration Assistant to restore the files and applications from the Time Machine backup at the date before the Yosemite upgrade. (not sure if this part will work)


Does anyone have any experience with this, or know if it will work, or know of a way to get the Time Machine drive to work on the old iMac?


Any help appreciated.

iMac

Posted on May 28, 2015 3:57 PM

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Help restoring Time Machine back-up to old machine

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