Time machine froze, now Catalina won't load...

[Bobtherabbit]

Hi all - (first time caller here)

So this week I bought an in-the-box 2018 macbook air, pre-loaded with Catalina. When i attempted to restore from Time Machine from a HD with Sierra, it seemed to freeze. I aborted the process, and in doing so, seem to have hit a problem.

I've reinstalled Catalina from Startup (Apple+R) twice, and to no avail. Every time it installs fine, but then freezes and computer resets after login passowrd is ask for. Also in Startup, I try to reboot from my Time Machine, but it seems to not like the Sierra OS.

I'm currently trying to format USBs with legally downloaded Catalina files to be able to boot, but either my new machine can't read them or I don't have the technical savvy to format them.

Any help here? I just dropped $1500 (and live a 5 hour drive from the closest mac store) on a brand new machine and would really like it to work...TIA!

 

[ferrarr]

The 2018 probably can not start up from Sierra.

The proper way to import to a new install from Time Machine, is to do it before you create a user account on the fresh macOS install. There is a time where the setup wizard asks to copy from; another Mac, a winOS PC, Time Machine or Network drive. That is the best time to use TM.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

You cannot install an older OS than what the Mac came with. Sierra will NOT work on your 2018 MBA. When you are doing a re-install, are you erasing the contents of the HD?

 

[lclev]

You have also run into HFS+ versus APFS formatting on your SSD. Not a good thing. I recently went through just such a mess at work when one of our people decided to wipe Catalina and install Mountain Lion. Let us just say - it was ugly but I got it repaired and have it running Catalina...again.

The only option is reinstalling. Holding down CMD + R , select and open disk utility and reformat your SSD using APFS then reinstall Catalina.

Lisa

 

[Rod]

Somehow you will need to erase the internal drive (SSD) This can be done with a bootable macOS installer on eg. a USB thumb drive.
Your problem is that you can't create one yourself without a working Mac computer.
You may be able to pick one up on Amazon or eBay prererably for macOS Mojave.
You can boot from it using the option key at startup. Open Disk Utility and Erase the SSD (Macintosh HD) reformat as APFS, choose GUID mapping and install Mojave.
Reboot from the Macintosh HD follow the instal instructions and once set up you can Upgrade to macOS Catalina.


Sent from my iPad using Mac-Forums

 

[Rod]

Now comes the difficult part. To my knowledge you cannot restore data from a time machine backup made with macOS Sierra to Mojave because the filing system is different.
Apple switched to APFS from HFS+ between Sierra and High Sierra. If however you still have your old device and you could upgrade it to High Sierra then make a new TM backup that would be compatible and could be used during setup of Mojave to restore your data.
Alternatively scrap your Time Machine backup and use the external HD to copy the files you really want to save eg, documents, photos, music you have ripped from CD's etc. Assuming you were using iCloud backups before, all your contacts, calendars, Mail, accounts, etc will be restored anyway as soon as you login to iCloud with your Apple ID.


Sent from my iPad using Mac-Forums

 

[MacInWin]

To my knowledge you cannot restore data from a time machine backup made with macOS Sierra to Mojave because the filing system is different.

Rod, is there a reference for that? I ask because my TM backup is on an HFS+ drive and I'm running Catalina doing TM backups to that drive. I seem to recall reading that TM can't use APFS drives, but not that it cannot recover from HFS+ drives. Maybe I missed something?

 

[IWT]

Jake said:

I seem to recall reading that TM can't use APFS drives,

That is certainly correct. Time Machine must be backed up to a EHD formatted HFS+ (aka Mac OS X Extended (Journaled).

This is a quote from Apple Support: "Important: You can back up from an HFS+ or APFS-formatted disk to an HFS+ disk; however, Time Machine can’t back up to an APFS-formatted disk. If you select a back up disk formatted as APFS, Time Machine offers to reformat it as HFS+.

Taken from: Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support

Note: If you create a backup on a Mac or partition with macOS Catalina, you can only use that backup on Mac computers or partitions with macOS Catalina. That would seem to agree with Rod's comment.

Back up your files with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support


Ian

 

[chscag]

Thanks for the additional info Ian.

I believe Apple is working on providing a version of Time Machine that can be used with APFS but no forecast date on when it will be ready. I suspect Apple will completely redo Time Machine. For now, I'm only using CCC with the SafetyNet kept on so I can restore older versions of files.