I have a 2012(?) macmini at home and last night I backed up my HDD to Time Machine then moved the 1TB HDD to the 2nd bay and installed a new 250GB SSD into the 1st bay. I formatted the new drive to Mac OS Journaled and rebooted. Now I have tried to restore from Time Machine, but my backup (after excluded folders) is about 375GB. I have 2 questions:
- Is it possible to alter the time machine backup and delete folders I know I have backups elsewhere to get this under 250GB and then restore from that?
- If 1 is not possible, how do I reboot to use the original HDD again and redo my Time Machine backup for essential files only?
I've read other questions which say try a clean install, but it would take me days to re-configure my system the way I need it, so that is not an option.
I have a full backup on external HD as well as full cloud backup.
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backup folder, it is not recommended. You can choose boot devices on startup by pressing and holding the Option (Alt) key. But isn't the system you booted still the old one, seeing that you just formatted the new drive?