Tell Time Machine to not do an initial full backup?

[DaveC]

I'm upgrading to a new Mac. I've cloned the old internal boot drive to the
new one.

I want to keep the same TM backup drive and the TM backup data base on this
drive that goes back 1 year.

Can I make TM backup the new boot drive in "incremental mode" to the existing
data base rather than backing up the entire drive (initial backup)? Since the
2 drives (old boot and new boot drives) are identical, it's a waste and I'll
lose all the ancient backups that exist on the current backup data base.

(TM tried to do a full backup of the new boot drive but ran out of room. Not
enough room for 2 data bases on the TM backup drive.)

What is the criteria that TM used to know that a new drive has been
installed? Has anyone hacked this parameter?

What's a good forum to ask this question? Maybe one where such OS X hacking
goes on...?

Thanks,
Dave
--
Mac mini 2.7 GHz i7 / 4 GB / 750 GB
OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard)

[Király]

In comp.sys.mac.system DaveC <inv...@invalid.net> wrote:
> Can I make TM backup the new boot drive in "incremental mode" to the existing
> data base rather than backing up the entire drive (initial backup)? Since the
> 2 drives (old boot and new boot drives) are identical, it's a waste and I'll
> lose all the ancient backups that exist on the current backup data base.

Yes, if you answer "Reuse Backup" when you are asked this question:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3oxpmqf

--
K.

Lang may your lum reek.

[DaveC]

> http://preview.tinyurl.com/3oxpmqf

This is what I want to do:

<http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101>

The procedure is for Leopard and doesn't work for SL.

[Sigh] So close yet so far...

Dave

[Király]

In comp.sys.mac.system DaveC <inv...@invalid.net> wrote:

> <http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101>
>
> The procedure is for Leopard and doesn't work for SL.

If you are running Snow Leopard, you should be given an option to
continue using the backups made on a different computer, a la the dialog
box I showed you in my previous post. Are you not being prompted with
that?

[DaveC]

"should...", I agree. I have never seen that dialog with the choice to reuse
the backup.

I plugged the TM backup drive into my old Mac and it starts doing incremental
backups again. Then I connect it to the new Mac it starts backing up
1,500,000 items. Certainly not an incremental backup...

TM apparently sees a different MAC (short for media access control, not
Macintosh, for those readers wondering) address when plugged into the new Mac
and starts a new backup.

Dave
--
2011 Mac mini 2.7 GHz i7 / 4 GB / 750 GB