My brother has a Mac and-tell me if this will work

[BirdDad]

He has for his boot drive a 1TB hard drive which is pretty messed up, he has made a lot of time machine backups. Can we copy the time machine image that we want to use to the green Western Digital then boot up with DVD OSX and restore the TM backup to the purple WD HD that I have for this purpose. Then boot up from the purple drive and re-partition the new drive to 430GBs after we copy all our photos and other large files to the green drive then make a new TM backup of just that partition and boot up with DVD again and this time restore the TM backup to the SSD and then boot from SSD and we should be good to go using the SSD as boot and the purple as our storage drive?
We are using a Mac Book Pro to copy the stuff.

 

[TheStu]

Ok, so you have?
A - Current Boot Drive
B - Current TimeMachine Drive
C - New WD Green?
D - New WD Purple
E - SSD

You want to replace A with E. And B with D?

What are the specs on the Mac? You might be able to skip a few steps, shave it down to:

Remove A, put in E. Install OS X and update it (I don't know if there are version issues with Time Machine, so update up to where the Mac currently is). Drop in D, launch Time Machine, and pull the data from B to D.

 

[BirdDad]

I forgot to say he is using Mountain Lion.
If this is doable how can we resize the system partition without messing things up?
WD green= 2TB
Purple = 3TB
We are hoping not to have to install OS X but to restore it from the Time Machine backup on the new drive.
Time Machine Can restore the boot partition and OS right?

 

[BirdDad]

The SSD is a 480GB Mushkin but I have read that they might have capacities as low as 443GBs so I would think that if we resized the purple drive after we restore the image then it should be shrunk down to 430GB to make sure that it can fit on the SSD. He really doesn't want to re install the OS from scratch.
Thanks

 

[TheStu]

If the existing boot drive is 'pretty messed up', then a re-install isn't the worst idea in the world. Especially if you're transitioning to an SSD at the same time.

 

[BirdDad]

thanks for your reply. He won't do it. He doesn't know much about hardware and OS stuff and I am just learning about Macs. If it is not Linux or Windows then I am a little lost. I know that it is based on BSD and I have installed ML a few times but don't have experience beyond that.

 

[sweenish]

It won't be complicated, at least re-installing the OS.

It's a straightforward installer, just make sure you read a guide or two first.

 

[Zaap]

Is this a Mac Pro with multiple internal hard drives/ ssd? Or are these externals?

If internal I don't see the need for all the complications, Macs are pretty simple in the best way for this sort of thing. Just install OSX to whichever drive (OSX installation is a few mouse clicks bone simple usually. Its not like Windows or anything else with a bunch of intenal hardware drivers to track down. It also won't touch any other drive in the system, and you can install it multiple times on a machine with more than one internal drive. ) Reboot the machine and select the new install as the startup disk. Copy over/restore old files. Reinstall third party apps you were using (that's the only major headache usually just because it can be time consuming).

Conversely if you're hellbent on cloning the current install (and hopefully not bringing whatever problems along with it) then I'd personally recommended use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable dupe of the drive. I have no idea if TM makes bootable cloned copies or not but CCC will. Its bone simple to use and its fully functional free for 30 days.

After the clone you should be able to switch it as the boot drive and be good to go.

Of course again, I'm assuming these are internal not external drives... other wise same thing just physically swap the cloned drive.

 

[BirdDad]

No it only has one drive which is now out of the computer-we are trying to copy all his stuff onto the green drive in cade the worst happens.
I don't want to clone. I want to copy the time machine images off the original system drive to the green drive then boot up without the original drive and restore the backup that's on the green drive to the purple drive then boot up from DVD and use time machine to restore the image that we copied on the green drive to the purple drive(which will later become his storage disk) then boot up from the purple drive and take all his valuable data(like his photos(he has a high end cam) and move it to the green HD. Boot from purple. Once in OS X run disk utility and shrink purple's primary(system) partition to 430GB then use Time Maching to back up just that partiton and save it to green. Then connect the SSD and boot up from dvd (without purple) into disk utility and run time machine and restore the backup we just made from the 430GB purple partiton to the SSD. Reboot this time from SSD to see if all is right. If it boots up and apps work then I think that it is safe to say that it worked and he can now erase the purple drive and make it his storage drive.
Am I making any more sense? I did something very similar on a couple of occasions with Windows PCs.
Thanks

 

[TheStu]

Wall of text up there is hard to parse in that form, here's what I've got:

No it only has one drive which is now out of the computer-we are trying to copy all his stuff onto the green drive in case the worst happens.
I don't want to clone.
1 - I want to copy the time machine images off the original system drive to the green drive
2 - then boot up without the original drive
3 - restore the backup that's on the green drive to the purple drive
4 - then boot up from DVD
5 - use time machine to restore the image that we copied on the green drive to the purple drive(which will later become his storage disk)
6 - then boot up from the purple drive and take all his valuable data(like his photos(he has a high end cam) and move it to the green HD.
7 - Boot from purple
8 - Once in OS X run disk utility and shrink purple's primary(system) partition to 430GB
9 - use Time Machine to back up just that partiton and save it to green.
10 - Then connect the SSD and boot up from dvd (without purple) into disk utility and run time machine and restore the backup we just made from the 430GB purple partiton to the SSD.
11 - Reboot this time from SSD to see if all is right.
12 - If it boots up and apps work then I think that it is safe to say that it worked and he can now erase the purple drive and make it his storage drive.

1 - Copy Time Machine -> WD_Green Drive (Cloning works best for this, it's bit for bit)
2 - How, with the WD_Purple? Is OS X installed on this drive?
3 - Restore from backup on WD_Green -> WD_Purple?
4 - Boot from DVD (What drive is in the computer at this point?)
5 - Time Machine doesn't work that way
6 - Wait, what? The data was on WD_Green, you moved it to WD_Purple, and now you're moving it back to WD_Green??
7 - See 6, you're already booted on WD_Purple.
8 - Not necessary, but ok.
9 - Time Machine doesn't work that way
10 - Time Machine doesn't work that way
11 - Too many steps
12 - That's correct, if things work then the process worked, but I don't think this process is going to work the way you think it is.

If your concern is that the existing internal drive* is about to hardware fail, then cloning it to the WD_Green is the most expeditious way of removing it from the equation.

*Is the 1TB internal his boot drive AND his Time Machine drive? That defeats the entire purpose of Time Machine.

Some things to know before you start:
A: Time Machine is NOT bootable. You can restore from a Time Machine, but that happens AFTER you re-install OS X.
B: There is NOTHING like Time Machine in Windows. Nothing. There's Shadow Volume Something, but that's not exactly the same.
C: I still feel like you're making this more complicated than it has to be, far too many steps.

Here's the plan that will work:
1 - Pull existing drive
1a - If Time Machine is on this drive, clone it NOW to another physical drive.
2 - Install SSD
3 - Install OS X to SSD
4 - Restore SSD from Time Machine

No need to fiddle with partitions or juggle multiple drives back and forth with green and purple and backing up and jibber jabber.

 

[BirdDad]

Wall of text up there is hard to parse in that form, here's what I've got:


1 - Copy Time Machine -> WD_Green Drive (Cloning works best for this, it's bit for bit)
2 - How, with the WD_Purple? Is OS X installed on this drive?
3 - Restore from backup on WD_Green -> WD_Purple?
4 - Boot from DVD (What drive is in the computer at this point?)
5 - Time Machine doesn't work that way
6 - Wait, what? The data was on WD_Green, you moved it to WD_Purple, and now you're moving it back to WD_Green??
7 - See 6, you're already booted on WD_Purple.
8 - Not necessary, but ok.
9 - Time Machine doesn't work that way
10 - Time Machine doesn't work that way
11 - Too many steps
12 - That's correct, if things work then the process worked, but I don't think this process is going to work the way you think it is.

If your concern is that the existing internal drive* is about to hardware fail, then cloning it to the WD_Green is the most expeditious way of removing it from the equation.

*Is the 1TB internal his boot drive AND his Time Machine drive? That defeats the entire purpose of Time Machine.

Some things to know before you start:
A: Time Machine is NOT bootable. You can restore from a Time Machine, but that happens AFTER you re-install OS X.
B: There is NOTHING like Time Machine in Windows. Nothing. There's Shadow Volume Something, but that's not exactly the same.
C: I still feel like you're making this more complicated than it has to be, far too many steps.

Here's the plan that will work:
1 - Pull existing drive
1a - If Time Machine is on this drive, clone it NOW to another physical drive.
2 - Install SSD
3 - Install OS X to SSD
4 - Restore SSD from Time Machine

No need to fiddle with partitions or juggle multiple drives back and forth with green and purple and backing up and jibber jabber.

Can't you run time machine from a boot dvd? If not then it seems pretty useless.

 

[TheStu]

Can't you run time machine from a boot dvd? If not then it seems pretty useless.

No, you can't boot from a Time Machine drive, but it looks like you CAN restore to a drive BEFORE installing the OS.

But that really will probably only save you about 20 minutes, and I don't know if you get to choose the data that is restored or if it will be a bulk thing.

 

[BirdDad]

I am not trying to boot up from time machine, I am trying to boot up from a Lion OS install DVD and run TM and restore without reinstalling the OS. Even Windows has a feature for imaging and boot up from a startup disc that you can restore the system with.

 

[BirdDad]

I am going to clone it with Clonezilla and make two copies so I can mess with one.