Restore backup to a new machine

[pincoz]

Hi,

I backed up my old mac using Dropbox's backup functions. I now have a new mac and I would like to restore the folder contents to the same standard folders (Documents, Desktop, Downloads, ...) on the new machine. How do I do? 

[Hannah]

Hey @pincoz, thanks for posting your question on our Community today.

If I understood correctly, you want to disable backup for your new computer and move the folders back to their original locations.

To do this, you can follow the steps in this article. 

Let me know if there's something I misunderstood, though, or if you have any questions.

[pincoz]

Sorry, maybe I was not clear.

I performed the backup of my old mac to dropbox using the dropbox backup app, which syncs the standard macOS folders to dropbox. I then disabled the backup on the old mac.

Now I have a new mac. Is it possible to link the old backup to the new mac so that the standard mac folders (documents, desktop, ... that are backed up by the dropbox app) get filled by the files backed up from the old mac to dropbox?

In other words e.g.:

Documents folder in the old laptop-> dropbox backup -> Documents folder on the new machine.

Similarly, can I restore the backup on a new machine if I crash the current one? If I cannot restore it, the backup function is quite useless...

Hope this clarifies the question.

Thanks.

[Hannah · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the clarification here.

With the way backup works, you can enable it on one computer and your files are backed up to Dropbox. 

If this computer stays connected to your Dropbox and backup also stays enabled, the backed up folders will sync to any other computer you connect to Dropbox.

However, the backed up folders of the first computer cannot replace the system folders of the new computer.

You would have both the system folders of the new computer in their original location and the backed up ones from the old computer, in Dropbox.