Does iCloud Keychain backup the "System" keychain somewhere?

[palebluedot]

tl;dr Does iCloud Keychain store the "System" key chain automatically?

Long version: Had to send my wife's Mac in for repair, formatted before sending in because she had a working iCloud backup. We get the Mac back, apparently her TC Time Machine backup is encrypted. Can not guess or remember the encryption password for the life of us - don't even remember setting one. She lost EVERYTHING. Memories of family members, photos, legal documents. All locked in her TM backup which we cannot access. Apparently this password is stored in the System key chain, which is now gone. She did have iCloud Keychain backed up, but I am not seeing it when I readded icloud to her Mac. any chance apple stores it elsewhere?

Thank you so much to any that can help, I've spent days and tons of money on disk scanning software all in vein. My wife is despondent.

Life lesson: Never encrypt a TM backup - even if you don't remember encrypting it. Go check your Keychain now and write down the password elsewhere.

 

[0128672]

Really sorry to hear about this experience and for the time, effort and pain it's caused you and your wife.

iCloud Keychain is only a subset of the macOS Keychain Access, so does not include the System Keychains, as you have found out, and is not included in iCloud backups (because it's not an iPad, iPhone or iPod).

With all the time you've put in on this issue, you're probably tired of reading things, but I'll include a couple of Apple Support links about these things in case they're helpful for the future.

What is Keychain Access on Mac?

On your Mac, you can use a keychain to keep track of keys, certificates, and other sensitive information.

support.apple.com

What does iCloud back up? - Apple Support

iCloud Backup helps keep your data safe by making a copy of the information on your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Vision Pro that isn't already synced to iCloud.

support.apple.com