Resuming Time Machine Backups on a New Computer
In all the times I've switched computers or reinstalled Mac OS X since Leopard came out, I've noticed that Time Machine is, in general, not very happy about letting the backup volume make the smooth switch as well. Basically, if you were making regular backups on machine X, then bought machine Y and restored your backup onto Y, when you hook up your backup volume to Y and start doing a backup to the same disk, it's either going to tell you that the backup disk wasn't found or start doing a full backup all over again. Currently the only way to avoid this is to follow the instructions in the linked article, which I followed (but not to the step because a couple of the commands didn't work) to resume using my old backups with my new computer. Although this is probably not a super-common issue, I believe that it's a big hassle for people switching computers and that there should perhaps be something in the Time Machine options that let's you sync with a pre-existing backup volume. (Apparently, Time Machine distinguishes between computers based on the Computer Name and the Primary Ethernet Address.)Labels: news
