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Time machine restore issues

E

ezsobre

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 18, 2007
49
2
Hi everyone. I am having a time machine issue. I am attempting to restore from backup. I started the computer in restore mode located the backup (two days old) and proceeded to select restore. My computer screen shows the “time machine system restore” screen, says it’s “restoring,” and it then Says “restoring files … time remaining calculating.” For many hours now I have also been getting a spinning pinwheel. And no progress appears to be being made. Photo attached.

Should I be letting this play out or is this hung and so I need to hard restart and deal with the fallout?
 

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1) What are your Mac and OS specs?
2) How long has this pinwheeling been going on?
3) How much data (roughly) are you attempting to restore?
4) And is the restore attempt being done over WiFi or Ethernet?
 
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It’s a 2017 or 2018 15 inch MacBook Pro. Had upgraded to Big Sur. Restoring to drive using high sierra. Pinwheeling now for several hours. Data restore is about 550gigs from an external hard drive that uses usb 3.
 
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I'd trust that it's working and let it go, maybe even for a few days. If after two days the progress bar hasn't budged, then maybe it's stuck.
 
ezsobre said:
Had upgraded to Big Sur. Restoring to drive using high sierra.
Click to expand...
Can you explain a little more here. You say you are restoring from Time Machine, but under which OS version was the Time Machine backup made? Explain step by step how you got here.
 
I backed up my computer in time machine. I then upgraded my os from high Sierra to Big Sur. I then found that Big Sur had issues with some work related programs I needed. So I went to restore prior backups in time machine and selected my most recent backup from two days ago before I upgraded to Big Sur. It is that backup that I currently have this pinwheeling on the restore window on.
 
Starting with Catalina, and including Big Sur, the main drive is divided into two volumes. One OS volume and a Data volume. You can see it in my screenshot here.

Screen Shot 2021-05-18 at 10.26.27 AM.png


High Sierra does not use that setup, so I don't think you will be able to restore a High Sierra install to a drive that was converted like this for a Big Sur install.

Did you boot to Internet recovery first then erase the whole drive before you started. I believe that will be the key here.
 
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Weaselboy said:
Starting with Catalina, and including Big Sur, the main drive is divided into two volumes. One OS volume and a Data volume. You can see it in my screenshot here.

View attachment 1776740

High Sierra does not use that setup, so I don't think you will be able to restore a High Sierra install to a drive that was converted like this for a Big Sur install.

Did your boot to Internet recovery first then erase the whole drive before you started. I believe that will be the key here.
Click to expand...
You are correct, Weasel. I tried that process early on with my MacBook and it was a no go. The OP is going to have to reformat his drive.
 
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One additional datapoint: the external hard drive is a wd elements usb 3 drive. While the pinwheel spins on the time machine restore window the led on the drive is blinking on off every 2.5 seconds or so. As best I can tell from googling a bit this means the drive is on standby but not actively working? (But note: the computer saw the drive when it start time machine and I was able to select it as the drive to restore from).
 
ezsobre said:
One additional datapoint: the external hard drive is a wd elements usb 3 drive. While the pinwheel spins on the time machine restore window the led on the drive is blinking on off every 2.5 seconds or so. As best I can tell from googling a bit this means the drive is on standby but not actively working? (But note: the computer saw the drive when it start time machine and I was able to select it as the drive to restore from).
Click to expand...
If I am not mistaken, that drive goes to sleep on its own. I used to have that drive a few years ago and ended up returning it because I couldn't get sleep mode on the drive to turn off.

If the drive light is blinking at that rate and the drive isn't making any noise, (which it should be) I doubt anything is happening.
 
Weaselboy said:
Starting with Catalina, and including Big Sur, the main drive is divided into two volumes. One OS volume and a Data volume. You can see it in my screenshot here.

View attachment 1776740

High Sierra does not use that setup, so I don't think you will be able to restore a High Sierra install to a drive that was converted like this for a Big Sur install.

Did your boot to Internet recovery first then erase the whole drive before you started. I believe that will be the key here.
Click to expand...
Ok thank you for this. So is the next step to hard boot restart and go from there?
 
ezsobre said:
Ok thank you for this. So is the next step to hard boot restart and go from there?
Click to expand...
Yep... just shut her down and restart while holding command-option-r. After entering your wifi into you should see a spinning grey globe while the recovery utility downloads. Once the utility starts, launch Disk Utility tell it to Show all devices. That way you can see the drive itself at the top and not just the volume(s).

Screen Shot 2021-05-18 at 10.39.48 AM.png


Now select the drive itself at the top like where it says Apple SSD in my earlier screenshot. Now click erase and format the whole drive to one MacOS Extended (Journaled) volume. Then quit Disk Util and click restore. Point the restore source to your Time Machine drive and go back like you did earlier to the older High Sierra backup to restore from.

That should do the trick.
 
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Weaselboy said:
Yep... just shut her down and restart while holding command-option-r. After entering your wifi into you should see a spinning grey globe while the recovery utility downloads. Once the utility starts, launch Disk Utility tell it to Show all devices. That way you can see the drive itself at the top and not just the volume(s).

View attachment 1776745

Now select the drive itself at the top like where it says Apple SSD in my earlier screenshot. Now click erase and format the whole drive to one MacOS Extended (Journaled) volume. Then quit Disk Util and click restore. Point the restore source to your Time Machine drive and go back like you did earlier to the older High Sierra backup to restore from.

That should do the trick.
Click to expand...
Fantastic thank you so much. I will give this a try and report back.
 
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ezsobre said:
Fantastic thank you so much. I will give this a try and report back.
Click to expand...
Stupid question—sorry for asking your instructions were clear and easy to follow but just for my own edification: Does this work with an apfs formatting or only extended?
 
You can do either and the HS install will convert it to APFS for you. I just wanted you to use the old version to be sure you got back to one volume.
 
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