Seeking advice on safety measures before upgrading to yosemite

[grandM]

So one day I intend to upgrade from Mavericks to Yosemite but I am a bit scared. I have an i7 mac mini connected to a dell screen over display cable. For now time machine does something but not sure if options are possible. I have no clue if time machine backups my data too. Time machine does its thing on an external HDD connected through usb 2.

What steps can I take to ensure I can revert to Mavericks safely if needed. Tx

 

[Bruno09]

What steps can I take to ensure I can revert to Mavericks safely if needed. Tx

Hi,

get an external disk and do a clone of your Mac.

You can use Carbon Copy Cloner (30 days free trial).

The clone is an exact copy of your internal disk, and it is bootable.
Plus, if you use CCC, it will also have the recovery partition.

If for whatever reason something went wrong during the installation of Yosemite, or if you want to revert to Mavericks, just clone back the clone to the internal drive. Done.

 

[Weaselboy]

So one day I intend to upgrade from Mavericks to Yosemite but I am a bit scared. I have an i7 mac mini connected to a dell screen over display cable. For now time machine does something but not sure if options are possible. I have no clue if time machine backups my data too. Time machine does its thing on an external HDD connected through usb 2.

What steps can I take to ensure I can revert to Mavericks safely if needed. Tx

As long as you have a current Time Machine backup, you can use that to restore back to Mavericks if you want. You just option key boot to the TM disk and that gets you to a recovery screen. From there use Disk Util to erase the entire disk then click restore. You will get a screen that asks what OS version/date you want to restore from. Just scroll back and pick a date from when you still had Mavericks and restore.

 

[grandM]

As long as you have a current Time Machine backup, you can use that to restore back to Mavericks if you want. You just option key boot to the TM disk and that gets you to a recovery screen. From there use Disk Util to erase the entire disk then click restore. You will get a screen that asks what OS version/date you want to restore from. Just scroll back and pick a date from when you still had Mavericks and restore.

Did TM backup all data on my hard disk?

 

[Weaselboy]

Did TM backup all data on my hard disk?

By default it does yes. As long as you did no manually exclude anything in the TM options... it is all there.

 

[grandM]

By default it does yes. As long as you did no manually exclude anything in the TM options... it is all there.

where can I see these options?

 

[294307]

When I upgraded my MacBook Air to OS X Yosemite, I decided to downgrade back to OS X Mavericks as some of the apps I use weren't optimised for Yosemite at the time I upgraded. As Weaselboy has mentioned, as long as you haven't excluded anything from being backed up, you can use Time Machine to restore OS X Mavericks if Yosemite doesn't work well for you (do make one final backup just before installing Yosemite by clicking on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and selecting "Back Up Now"). I restored OS X Mavericks from my Time Machine backup disk and everything was restored to how it was before.

where can I see these options?

System Preferences -> Time Machine -> Options... (bottom-right). You should only see your actual Time Machine disk in the list of excluded items.

 

[Weaselboy]

where can I see these options?

Like bbnck said, in System Preferences if you open the Time Machine pane then click options you will see a window there that lists anything you have excluded from backup.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Hi,

get an external disk and do a clone of your Mac.

You can use Carbon Copy Cloner (30 days free trial).

The clone is an exact copy of your internal disk, and it is bootable.
Plus, if you use CCC, it will also have the recovery partition.

If for whatever reason something went wrong during the installation of Yosemite, or if you want to revert to Mavericks, just clone back the clone to the internal drive. Done.

+1 My advice too!

 

[grandM]

As long as you have a current Time Machine backup, you can use that to restore back to Mavericks if you want. You just option key boot to the TM disk and that gets you to a recovery screen. From there use Disk Util to erase the entire disk then click restore. You will get a screen that asks what OS version/date you want to restore from. Just scroll back and pick a date from when you still had Mavericks and restore.

I must press option upon booting then?

----------

Hi,

get an external disk and do a clone of your Mac.

You can use Carbon Copy Cloner (30 days free trial).

The clone is an exact copy of your internal disk, and it is bootable.
Plus, if you use CCC, it will also have the recovery partition.

If for whatever reason something went wrong during the installation of Yosemite, or if you want to revert to Mavericks, just clone back the clone to the internal drive. Done.

why is this better than time machine?

 

[Weaselboy]

I must press option upon booting then?

Yes exactly. That would get you to a boot manager screen where you pick the TM disk to boot from and that takes you to the recovery screen.