[MacTUG] Time Machine question

[Glenn Anderson]

Here is the situation...

I have a user that after upgrading (10.4 ->10.5) is having problems  
with their iMac not booting up correctly (most of the time). As I  
suspect it might be a case of something being carried over from 10.4  
to 10.5 that is causing a problem, and that they maybe should do a  
clean install.

The person does have a time machine backup of their system, and is  
willing to do a clean OS  install of 10.5 (i.e. erase their hard disk  
and such). After which they feel that they should be able to simply  
connect their time machine backup drive and restore their files.

This sounds easy enough, but as I have not had a chance to try this  
sort of thing out with time machine, I am somewhat reluctant to tell  
them to go ahead. For example, when they plug in their backup drive,  
will time machine on the rebuilt system know that the drive is their  
time machine backup drive and allow them to restore from it? Or is  
there a chance that Time Machine will ask them if they want to use  
the drive as their time machine backup drive and when they say "yes"  
it will reformat it?

Has anyone done this?

If this fails, can I easily mount the backup drive as a "normal"  
drive and recover the files by hand?

PS. I would prefer to have a CarbonCopy backup of their system, but  
they don't have a spare drive for this.



Glenn Anderson
Client Services, IST
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, On
519-888-4567 x33327
anderson at uwaterloo.ca



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