Can you Time Machine restore from x86 to ARM and vice versa?

[kaans]

Well the title says it all, I wonder, with these development Mac Mini's, whether you can just restore a previously Intel backup onto the ARM using system, and then, take a backup, and restore it back onto an Intel Mac?

I think this matters a lot in terms of planning, especially if you are the kind of person who prepares for hardware failures, and they do fail a lot these days

 

[cmaier]

Well the title says it all, I wonder, with these development Mac Mini's, whether you can just restore a previously Intel backup onto the ARM using system, and then, take a backup, and restore it back onto an Intel Mac?

I think this matters a lot in terms of planning, especially if you are the kind of person who prepares for hardware failures, and they do fail a lot these days

I can’t see any reason why not, at least for the Intel->arm direction. The problem with going the other way is only that you may have arm-only (not-fat) binaries in your backup that will do you no good on an intel machine, whereas intel binaries will generally work fine via Rosetta on an arm machine. But the disk formats are the same so there’s no particular reason that the time machine process shouldn’t work.

 

[aednichols]

Something to think about: there is no currently shipping Mac OS that can run on Apple Silicon, the DTKs can only run the Big Sur beta.

If you're worried about data integrity, the data shouldn't be on a beta system.

 

[kaans]

Really doesn't matter, I wonder, when the Silicon's roll out, whether we'll have the safe chance to try them, and sell and revert if things don't work
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Or- better yet, you could have a Emergency Mac Mini that you use if your main machine is busted and in repair, if it's an Intel Mac Mini, it will become obsolete when the new Silicons roll out