Restore from a CCC backup in Catalina to an iMac with Big Sur.

[Alwyn]

I want to restore a backup from my current 2014 iMac to a 2017 iMac already loaded with Big Sur. One of the options is System & Network. Should I exclude this option to avoid reverting to Catalina?

 

[MacInWin]

A CCC backup is just a file copy, basically. So you could find the file/folder(s) you want to restore in Finder, then copy them from the CCC drive to your boot drive wherever you want them and it should work just fine. You generally can't do that with Time Machine backups but it works with CCC clones.

 

[harryb2448]

For mine suggest one decides which operating system and then stick with that.

 

[Rod]

The first question is what macOS were you running on your 2014 iMac?
If it was a macOS compatible with a 2017 iMac then you could take the drastic action of reverse cloning your CCC backup of the 2014 iMac to the 2017 iMac but that would entail erasing the 2017 iMac completely.
Personally I would not do that. MacInWin's suggestion is by far the less risky, a lot less work and saves you upgrading again to Big Sur which you already have.
Just Drag an Drop the files you want to the new device.
Applications are best downloaded from their source new because that way you will get the updated versions compatible with Big Sur.
I do this after a clean instal most years, just start out with the files you need most. Microsoft Office can be a little problematic but so long as you have your registration key it's not too difficult.
You might also look into using Migration Assistant but I am unfamiliar with that, someone else will have to comment on that.

 

[Alwyn]

The first question is what macOS were you running on your 2014 iMac?
If it was a macOS compatible with a 2017 iMac then you could take the drastic action of reverse cloning your CCC backup of the 2014 iMac to the 2017 iMac but that would entail erasing the 2017 iMac completely.
Personally I would not do that. MacInWin's suggestion is by far the less risky, a lot less work and saves you upgrading again to Big Sur which you already have.
Just Drag an Drop the files you want to the new device.
Applications are best downloaded from their source new because that way you will get the updated versions compatible with Big Sur.
I do this after a clean instal most years, just start out with the files you need most. Microsoft Office can be a little problematic but so long as you have your registration key it's not too difficult.
You might also look into using Migration Assistant but I am unfamiliar with that, someone else will have to comment on that.

MOSTLY SOLVED
I checked with Apple as they had helped me to clean the 2017 iMac from Mojave and upgraded it to Big Sur. Apparently system files just has passwords and bookmarks (17kb). The lady also said that restoring from my CCC backup wouldn't change the MacOS. She was right. This surprises me because the sole purpose of setting up CCC was to ensure that, if I was unhappy with an upgrade, I could revert to the previous MacOS.

The only problem is that after backing up the 2014 iMac to CCC I erased its Time Machine backup and did a full back up. Unfortunately, because the last backup from the CCC was 22 Dec last year it can't recognise the 'new' Time Machine and says that Time Machine isn't connected. In fact in the select disk pane are 2 identical Time Machines. I removed one and, when I started this reply it said that it would back up in 45 seconds. The attached shows what it says. I used to have 2 disks labelled Time Machine 1 & Time Machine 2. The second one died. View attachment 33198

 

[MacInWin]

Glad you got your stuff back. One point of clarification. The migration you did, with Apple's help, was just that, a migration. Your stuff was moved from one drive to the other by Migration Assistant (I bet, since it was Apple), and that process can migrate your files and account information from just about any kind of drive. Given the CCC drive was a clone of your previous version, it migrated just fine. But you COULD have done a complete swap, including the OS, from that CCC drive if you wanted or needed to. Just boot from it and use CCC to clone it back to the internal drive (after formatting it to get rid of anything on it) and you would have had a completely new clone, including the OS. So the "sole purpose" as you called it, was still possible, but that isn't what you asked for help here to do. Basically, you used Migration Assistant to do what I recommended in Post #2.

Your second paragraph is a bit confusing to me. You said you made a clone of the 2014 iMac with CCC. Then you erased the TM backup and did another full backup. I presume you used Disk Utility to erase the TM backup as doing it through Finder is very, very slow and can often fail to delete some files because they are marked in the backup as system files. But using Disk Utility to erase the drive is faster and gets rid of everything on the drive. So, you erased the drive and did a new backup. Then you referred to "it" several times in this sentence.

Unfortunately, because the last backup from the CCC was 22 Dec last year it can't recognise the 'new' Time Machine and says that Time Machine isn't connected. In fact in the select disk pane are 2 identical Time Machines. I removed one and, when I started this reply it said that it would back up in 45 seconds. The attached shows what it says. I used to have 2 disks labelled Time Machine 1 & Time Machine 2. The second one died.

What is "it" that can't recognize the 'new' Time Machine backup? Is it the Time Machine app? Finder? CCC? What is the error message when "it" can't recognize the backup? What select pane are you talking about? Your attachment didn't attach, apparently, so we can't read what it says. CCC is not the tool to use to recover a TM backup, you use TM to do that (or Migration Assistant). CCC won't do anything with a TM backup. The migration you did should not have migrated Time Machine from the older backup to the new system because TM is considered a system application. So TM should be able to see the backup it just made. But I am wondering if it even made a backup at all, or if you erased the old one at all, if you are seeing two possible backups to choose from.

I used to have 2 disks labelled Time Machine 1 & Time Machine 2. The second one died.

When did that happen? To which one was the most recent backup sent?

 

[Rod]

Let's go back to the original question, the part about Time Machine is just confusing to me. When you say that the girl from Apple told you that the CCC clone would not change the macOS from Big Sur to Mojave she was right. You cannot overwrite a later macOS with an earlier one by "restoring" from a clone. You say that this was the point and I get that but to do it you would first have to erase and format the drive on your 2017 iMac. Then you could restore your data AND Mojave to the 2017 device. This is what Jake was saying in post #6.
This was what I was alluding to in my first post, although it seemed like more work that you needed to do ie. Boot the 2017 iMac from the CCC clone of your 2014 iMac.
Erase and reformat the 2017 iMac using Dusk Utility on the clone.
Reverse clone the CCC backup of Mojave onto the 2017 iMac (you would then have a duplicate of your 2014 iMac on the 2017 iMac) then upgrade it to Big Sur in the usual way.
This would have been my chosen method and you can still do that.

So now you have a 2014 iMac running Mojave and a 2017 iMac running Big Sur with all of the files and data from the 2014 iMac transferred, yes?

If you want a full Time Machine Backup of your 2014 iMac I suggest you erase the old external drive you used (with Disk Utility) and perform a new TM backup. I'm not sure why you have two but it's unimportant really. Your paragraph about the TM backup from the 22 Dec confuses me, I hope you are not using the same external HD to perform your CCC clone as well as Time Machine, that would be a bad idea.

 

[Alwyn]

There’s a lot for me to digest here but I’ll try to answer the key issues requiring answers.

After Big Sur was installed I restored from a CCC backup of my 2014 iMac

While The installation was proceeding I took the 2014 iMac into another room and erased the Time Machine backup on a separate external disk drive using disk utility. I then did a new backup. Obviously this means that it was later than the CCC backup.

Your question what is ‘it’ that can’t recognise the new Time Machine backup?

Answer: in System Preferences/Time Machine I see Time Machine 1. It reads 733 GB available, Oldest backup: None, Latest Backup: None.

Looking in the same place with Time Machine connected to the 2014 iMac it reads Only backup 6 January 2021.

 

[Rod]

What you are seeing in Time Machine on your 2017 iMac is correct. You have never done a TM backup of Big Sur. TM is a system application, Big Sur will not recognise a TM backup of a 2014 iMac Running Mojave. As far as Big Sur is concerned there is no backup just an EHD with unused storage of 733GB.

 

[Alwyn]

What you are seeing in Time Machine on your 2017 iMac is correct. You have never done a TM backup of Big Sur. TM is a system application, Big Sur will not recognise a TM backup of a 2014 iMac Running Mojave. As far as Big Sur is concerned there is no backup just an EHD with unused storage of 733GB.

What you are seeing in Time Machine on your 2017 iMac is correct. You have never done a TM backup of Big Sur. TM is a system application, Big Sur will not recognise a TM backup of a 2014 iMac Running Mojave. As far as Big Sur is concerned there is no backup just an EHD with unused storage of 733GB.

Thanks Rod,
You say Big Sur will not recognise a TM backup of a 2014 iMac Running Mojave. What about one from Catalina? It wasn't the 2014 iMac that had Mojave but the 2017 one. The Apple lady helped me to load Big Sur from Mojave. While I backed up the 2017 iMac to CCC I backed up the 2014 iMac with Catalina to Time Machine.

If an upgrade fails to recognise a backup from an earlier macOS I will of course have to erase it and create a new backup. I have the same problem with my Time Capsule but there doesn't seem to be an option to erase the backup. If that is the case is the only solution to press the reset button?

 

[harryb2448]

Alwyn why do you want both Big Sur nand Catalina on the same iMac?

Neither for example will run 32bit apps.

 

[Alwyn]

Alwyn why do you want both Big Sur nand Catalina on the same iMac?

Neither for example will run 32bit apps.

I don’t want Big Sir and Catalina on the same iMac. The problem is that, when I had upgraded the 2017 iMac to Big Sur, I restored everything except the macOS from a backup to CCC from my old 2014 iMac. While doing that I backed up the 2014 iMac to Time Machine but, when I connected Time Machine to the 2017 iMac the backup can’t be detected. Rod says Big Sur can’t detect a backup from Mojave. That wasn’t the issue. I backed up from Catalina not Mojave.

 

[MacInWin]

Rod says Big Sur can’t detect a backup from Mojave. That wasn’t the issue. I backed up from Catalina not Mojave.

Small nitpick. But maybe important. What Big Sur can't do is for Time Machine to recognize a backup from a previous version of macOS. Big Sur, as an operating system, can see the backup and can even use it for Migration Assistant if you wish. And that works for both Mojave and Catalina. But TM in Big Sur won't recognize a TM backup from Mojave or Catalina because they are different version of macOS. So you would need to create a new Big Sur TM backup from scratch. You can put it on that same drive without necessarily erasing the other, but that might confuse YOU (It won't confuse Time Machine).

The same logic applies to your Time Capsule. The one difference is the TC backup is in a different format (sparsebundle), which is used to make backups over LANs to reduce the total data to be move. (Sparsebundles are lightly compressed to save that space.)

 

[Rod]

Regardless of which macOS you have on the 2014 iMac as you can see it is not readable on the 2017 iMac. Were you hoping to use it for data transfer or just a continuing backup of the data from your 2014 iMac?
This is not something you can do with TM but you can do it with CCC.
A CCC backup of your 2014 iMac can be upgraded to Big Sur in the same way you would upgrade the internal HD. ie. Boot from the clone, download the Big Sur installer, run it to upgrade its operating system to macOS 11.1 you will then have a clone of the 2014 iMac running Big Sur.
You could then use it to restore files or data from the 2014 iMac to the 2017 iMac and perform ongoing backups plus it would be bootable.
As for your question about TC I'm not sure, I have never used TC so I am not sure how you would erase it but i assume it's done in a similar way to an EHD.
Really, once you have all your data on the 2017 iMac which I assume was your original intention you can use DU to erase your TM backups and make new ones for each device as required.
I do this at each major upgrade of my macOS anyway. Some users look on TM as a sort of archive, a backup which contains data no longer on the parent device that could be restored if required. I consider that a bad idea but that's just me.

 

[Alwyn]

Small nitpick. But maybe important. What Big Sur can't do is for Time Machine to recognize a backup from a previous version of macOS. Big Sur, as an operating system, can see the backup and can even use it for Migration Assistant if you wish. And that works for both Mojave and Catalina. But TM in Big Sur won't recognize a TM backup from Mojave or Catalina because they are different version of macOS. So you would need to create a new Big Sur TM backup from scratch. You can put it on that same drive without necessarily erasing the other, but that might confuse YOU (It won't confuse Time Machine).

The same logic applies to your Time Capsule. The one difference is the TC backup is in a different format (sparsebundle), which is used to make backups over LANs to reduce the total data to be move. (Sparsebundles are lightly compressed to save that space.)

As Rod implies it’s me that is nitpicking. I seem to have everything I need on the new iMac So, as I backed up my wife’s iMac to Time Machine, I just removed mine and that seems to have worked.

Is there a way to delete my backup on Time Capsule without deleting my wife’s.

 

[MacInWin]

I meant that what I was about to say was a small nitpick, not anything you or Rod said. I was just distinguishing between using an older TM backup by adding to it or using it as a source for a Migration. You cannot RESTORE from an older one, but you can MIGRATE from it.

 

[Rod]

Actually that's really handy to know, it's perfectly logical and obvious now that I think about it but I had never thought of it. So now it just comes down to erasing the TC, that's something I've never done.

 

[Alwyn]

Actually that's really handy to know, it's perfectly logical and obvious now that I think about it but I had never thought of it. So now it just comes down to erasing the TC, that's something I've never done.

I hadn’t read this before replying to your useful post about preparing a device for sle. What I didn’t mention was that it was Jake’s suggestion that I didn’t have a recovery partition that caused me to make the mistake I did. Is there a simple way to find out if, after an erase install, Catalina is still there?

 

[Alwyn]

Actually that's really handy to know, it's perfectly logical and obvious now that I think about it but I had never thought of it. So now it just comes down to erasing the TC, that's something I've never done.

I meant that what I was about to say was a small nitpick, not anything you or Rod said. I was just distinguishing between using an older TM backup by adding to it or using it as a source for a Migration. You cannot RESTORE from an older one, but you can MIGRATE from it.

What puzzles me is that, in the past, Time Machine has continued to work after an upgrade. Does it overwrite with a completely new backup?

 

[MacInWin]

I think the reason this time that TM is being more awkward is that the deep changes in APFS, coupled with the changes in Big Sur security have made upgrading an old TM to the new impractical. So it just starts a new one. You can always get to the files in the old one with Migration Assistant, or even Finder, if you are careful about it.