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Doc Horrorshow

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 22, 2009
51
0
London
Whilst Canon figure out a patch for their now non-functioning printers, I'd like to roll back my Sierra installation for a few days. I restarted my iMac (late 2013) holding down Command + R, I selected my back-up external HDD for a date two days before I installed Sierra and then an empty drive as Destination. The roll-back (or whatever it was doing) took a couple of hours before automatically restarting the iMac to complete the procedure. Or so I thought. What do I now have? Well, I still have Sierra. Where did I go wrong? Can anyone explain what I ought to've done?
Thanks,
Doc
 

Left4DeadBoy

macrumors regular
Sep 20, 2015
174
16
hi Becau-se Canon is nonfunctioning currently Id recommend that you buy a new printer when its convenient for you; of course not until that time . You can remember to do that in the future for easy printing .
 

Doc Horrorshow

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 22, 2009
51
0
London
Many thanks for those. Regarding the osxdaily method. I used the Time Machine method, as described, but still ended up with Sierra again after the reboot. Do you know why this may've happened?
 

golfnut1982

macrumors 6502a
Oct 12, 2014
543
1,383
Chicago, IL
I might be wrong here, and would like to be corrected If I am, but what I found out was you have to use the "latest full complete" time machine backup of your recent backup and not one that you made afterward (partial). For instance, I made a complete backup before I updated, then later in the day I backed up a partial. Then I updated to sierra. Had some weird issues with safari, then tried to restore using the last backup of el cap with time machine and nothing worked. Tried it again with the "first" complete backup then it worked. Let us know. If I'm wrong here, let me know.
 

Partron22

macrumors 68030
Apr 13, 2011
2,655
808
Yes
This is why I have a stack of removable terabyte drives, and a couple caddies.
They're a lot like zip disks used to be, cheap and with lots of storage space.
You just make a complete copy of your startup disk before updating.
If you don't like the update, you make a copy of it to one of your spare TB drives, and restore from the drive you made before doing the update.
I'd use Time Machine, but haven't trusted it since it broke on me back in OSX Mavericks.
 

CoastalOR

macrumors 68040
Jan 19, 2015
3,028
1,149
Oregon, USA
Many thanks for those. Regarding the osxdaily method. I used the Time Machine method, as described, but still ended up with Sierra again after the reboot. Do you know why this may've happened?
I can't tell you why it happened. TM is nice when it works for you, but sometimes it may not. It is good to have options.

If the method you tried did not work, then try one of the other link methods to get you back to El Capitan.

I use TM & CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner). I like having a bootable clone if needed. Again, having options. CCC has a fully functional 30 day trial.
 

hallux

macrumors 68040
Apr 25, 2012
3,439
1,005
Are you positive it booted to the restored El Capitan drive and not the Sierra drive? It sounds like you just need to hold Option during boot and select the drive containing your restored El Capitan install.
 

Matty_TypeR

macrumors 6502a
Oct 1, 2016
641
555
UK
i went back to el captain as sierra was just to buggy for me, lost my network HP printer in sierra, saw it but could send nothing to it
 

Wando64

macrumors 68020
Jul 11, 2013
2,298
3,036
i went back to el captain as sierra was just to buggy for me, lost my network HP printer in sierra, saw it but could send nothing to it

To be honest every time I upgrade I have problems with my HP Printer.
I don't think it is a Sierra issue as such as I have the same issues (with HP printer) when I upgrade to a new Windows version as well.
 
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