Clean install of Snow Leopard from Time Machine backup

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Clean install of Snow Leopard from Time Machine backup

I am swapping computers with my daughter. Both are MacBooks, one with Yosemite installed, the other with Snow Leopard.

We have backed up our files to separate external drives. Now I have two related questions.

1. As I understand it, we can now delete all contents from the Snow Leopard MacBook and do a clean install of Yosemite or El Capitan prior to (or at the same time as?) recovering data from the TM backup. Is this assumption correct?

2. The contents for the Snow Leopard system will have to be installed on the MacBook currently running Yosemite. What is the procedure here? In other words, is it possible to erase the disk and start the computer in recovery mode having only the Time Machine backup?

TIA.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jan 23, 2016 1:30 AM

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Answer 1

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QuickTimeKirk

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Jan 26, 2016 7:56 AM in response to pop_eye

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Answer 2

Eric Root

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684,027 points

Jan 26, 2016 7:56 AM in response to pop_eye

1. If you are going to erase the hard drive, you will need a bootable drive to install El Capitan. A USB Flash drive works well. You can make a bootable USB stick to install using this free program which will do all the work for you. Download the OS, quit the installer, then boot off the Flash drive to erase the drive, and then install the OS. Use Setup Assistant to restore from Time Machine.

Bootable USB Flash Drive – Diskmaker X

2. You should be able to boot into the Recovery Partition and then restore from Time Machine. The hard drive should be erase as part of the Time Machine restoration.

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Answer 3

pop_eye Author

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Jan 26, 2016 7:56 AM in response to Eric Root

1. Worked, although I was not able to get El Capitan to install from the bootable USB I had prepared as per instructions. So I installed Yosemite on empty MacBook with the TM backup, and after that upgraded to El Capitan.

2. Apparently there is no way to revert to Snow Leopard once the computer has been upgraded to a later OS, so I wasn’t able to do as suggested (which was really what I wanted). Managed to get my user data back after installing Yosemite, not sure whether a “downgrade” to Snow Leopard would be possible now.

Thank you both for your help!

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Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

Jan 26, 2016 8:28 AM in response to pop_eye

If the computer previously ran Snow Leopard, you should be able to revert to it by erasing the disk and reinstalling it from the DVD. Make sure you have good backups.

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