I didn't want to do a full time machine restore because it took 4 hours last time. But I was able to copy and paste the missing data. Not sure what else is missing or why it even happened.
Was there a lot of data and apps to restore? Four hours can be reasonable if there was a lot to restore. Also, having only USB 2.0 makes quite a difference.
Think I discovered the issue, seems to be with iCloud. I've read where others lost their desktop and document data, and it was in an iCloud folder. I must have hit some setting to do this but don't remember. I do know that I'm not liking iCloud.
I need to figure out iCloud, because I had lost all my Calendar events on my MBP but was able to get them back in the iCloud settings. You'd think the Time Machine backup would have kept all my settings the same, apparently not.
So, I noticed that every now and then I'm still getting the spinning beach ball using safari. I was sure I'd never see this again after upgrading to an SSD and 16GB of RAM. Could Safari be the issue?
A failed hard drive cable is not uncommon for the 2010, 2011, and 2012 13" MBP.
I had a 2010 13" that would not erase or partiton a hard drive or ssd out of the blue. Replaced the cable and everything went back to normal. On a 2012, the unit would take a while to recognise the ssd boot drive and boot to the log in screen. I'm talking about 10 minutes. Again, I replaced the cable and everything was fine again.
Thanks for that info! But I'm still not sure this is the reason for my issue as it happens so infrequently. I can't remember if it did this when it was new. Wondering if I should find a replacement cable just in case.