Hello- I have a late 2012 Mac mini. Over the years I have upgraded Ram and installed a SSD. I run Open Core Legacy patcher so I can run Sequoia and it has run perfectly since Sequoia was released. I stupidly clicked install when recently prompted to install Tahoe. It ran and installed but it broke bluetooth and USB drivers so I had no control over anything. I was able to booth into recovery mode but have been fighting for multiple hours every day for over a week now trying to recover my files. Especially my photos, videos, music. I have spent hours reading and trying dozens of things. Here is what I have tried so far
Hold CMD+R and recover from Time Machine. Error can't recover from time machine
CMD+R first aid all drives and then try the above.. Same result
CMD+R reinstall OS. It reinstalls Mountain lion which is totally useless and could not do anything
Learned about CMD+Option+R which offers the last OS this Mac can handle which is Catalina. Installed that. Now tried recover from Time Machine. Error can't recover
Tried from Catalina migration assistant. Error wrong OS can't do it
Installed Catalina again. Reinstalled OCLP and installed sequoia. Ran recovery and recover from Time Machine. Finally it looked like it would work. Took 6 hours and ran the entire recovery until the very end got stuck in a boot loop where it would boot and make it to the screen saying something like "Time Machine has finished and requires a restart", it would restart and just come bak to that page over and over. Tried this twice over 2 days
Tried all of the different things like reset PRAM etc
Read holding Opt+Q when on the screen about Time Machine needing to restart. That allows me to quit and the computer boots but the files are not there. It appears as though the files are consuming space on the drive but they are not available.
CMD+OPT+R and the entire process again and again... nothing
One more time of installing everything and getting back to Seqouia and rolling back root patches, try again, same result
I am probably forgetting a few things as this has been consuming all day every day but the point is nothing works. I have tried every trick posted to forums, reddit, etc etc etc. This brings me to last night/today...
Did all of the OPLC and Sequoia install again and tried migration assistant. It runs the entire thing, takes 8 hours, and then doesn't actually work at the end giving an error.
I am typing this by sitting on sequoia 15.7.2. I have decided to manually pull over my photos from Time Machine but even that will not seem to work. No matter what I do when I import them I can't get them to show in the photos app. Same with music, home videos, etc etc. I am very close to giving up but this is the family computer and with nearly a TB of pictures and videos I can't just walk away. Please help!
Side note... This mini has a 1TB SSD. 700GB is showing used but again no access. I also have a 5Tb USB drive that acts as Time Machine and another 1TB USB drive for movies and iTunes. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
** After typing this I tried migration again and followed the legacy core instructions exactly by rolling back the patches and it still got stuck in the boot loop. Only way out is command +Q to quit. The files must be there as the 700Gb migration only took a few minutes but they are not useable. Really jsut need all my pictures, videos,and music. Thanks
Hello- I have a late 2012 Mac mini. Over the years I have upgraded Ram and installed a SSD. I run Open Core Legacy patcher so I can run Sequoia and it has run perfectly since Sequoia was released. I stupidly clicked install when recently prompted to install Tahoe. It ran and installed but it broke bluetooth and USB drivers so I had no control over anything. I was able to booth into recovery mode but have been fighting for multiple hours every day for over a week now trying to recover my files. Especially my photos, videos, music. I have spent hours reading and trying dozens of things. Here is what I have tried so far
Hold CMD+R and recover from Time Machine. Error can't recover from time machine
CMD+R first aid all drives and then try the above.. Same result
CMD+R reinstall OS. It reinstalls Mountain lion which is totally useless and could not do anything
Learned about CMD+Option+R which offers the last OS this Mac can handle which is Catalina. Installed that. Now tried recover from Time Machine. Error can't recover
Tried from Catalina migration assistant. Error wrong OS can't do it
Installed Catalina again. Reinstalled OCLP and installed sequoia. Ran recovery and recover from Time Machine. Finally it looked like it would work. Took 6 hours and ran the entire recovery until the very end got stuck in a boot loop where it would boot and make it to the screen saying something like "Time Machine has finished and requires a restart", it would restart and just come bak to that page over and over. Tried this twice over 2 days
Tried all of the different things like reset PRAM etc
Read holding Opt+Q when on the screen about Time Machine needing to restart. That allows me to quit and the computer boots but the files are not there. It appears as though the files are consuming space on the drive but they are not available.
CMD+OPT+R and the entire process again and again... nothing
One more time of installing everything and getting back to Seqouia and rolling back root patches, try again, same result
I am probably forgetting a few things as this has been consuming all day every day but the point is nothing works. I have tried every trick posted to forums, reddit, etc etc etc. This brings me to last night/today...
Did all of the OPLC and Sequoia install again and tried migration assistant. It runs the entire thing, takes 8 hours, and then doesn't actually work at the end giving an error.
I am typing this by sitting on sequoia 15.7.2. I have decided to manually pull over my photos from Time Machine but even that will not seem to work. No matter what I do when I import them I can't get them to show in the photos app. Same with music, home videos, etc etc. I am very close to giving up but this is the family computer and with nearly a TB of pictures and videos I can't just walk away. Please help!
Side note... This mini has a 1TB SSD. 700GB is showing used but again no access. I also have a 5Tb USB drive that acts as Time Machine and another 1TB USB drive for movies and iTunes. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
** After typing this I tried migration again and followed the legacy core instructions exactly by rolling back the patches and it still got stuck in the boot loop. Only way out is command +Q to quit. The files must be there as the 700Gb migration only took a few minutes but they are not useable. Really jsut need all my pictures, videos,and music. Thanks
Hello all,
No replies but in case someone else stumbles upon this I wanted to let you know I got it fixed. Runs out that while Sequoia runs fine on older macs via LCOP, it does have a known bug with Time machine backups. It creates them fine but restoring with a time machine does not work sometimes, and in my case ever. So after fighting with it for about a week I finally stumbled upon a great youtube video that said to roll back to Sonoma. Once I did that I was able to restore using Time machine. I then ran the Sequoia update and am back to how I was. However, it is suggested to just stay on Sonoma for older Mac's like mine. I went back to Sequoia because all of the pictures and imovie files seemed to play nicer since they were backed up as Sequoia. Anyway, if you find yourself reading this with the same issue, revert back to senoma and you should be good.
