Cannot restore MBP from network Time Machine backup

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Cannot restore MBP from network Time Machine backup

I have a mid-2014 MacBook Pro running Mojave 10.14.6. Recently I installed Catalina. Due to the excessive bugginess I decided to rollback to Mojave. I had much trouble doing that for some odd reason. I did a clean install of Mojave from a USB Installer. That went fine. However, when I attempt to restore my data from my LAN Time Machine backup, I receive a notice saying trouble connecting to the network. I tried using Migration Assistant, restore in recovery mode, going through wifi, ethernet, and even direct usb connection of the backup drive. Nothing seems to work. When Catalina was installed it performed one backup of the system prior to deciding to rollback.

If I cannot do a conventional restore, is there a way I can access my individual files from the sparse bundle package? And before you mention it, no, I cannot do that via Time Machine either. Is there a way to get into my backup using Terminal? Do I need to edit permissions perhaps? Please try to be precise and succinct as possible. My gratitude.

My MBP is a mid-2014 with all the bells and whistles running Mojave 10.14.6.

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Oct 16, 2019 8:10 PM

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Answer 1

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dot.com

Level 4

2,455 points

Oct 16, 2019 8:44 PM in response to dizzylizzy42

The update to Catalina has changed your boot volume in a way that is difficult to undo and that previous versions of macOS don't understand how to deal with. You have a new "Data" volume in the APFS container I'm guessing.

If this were my system, I would completely erase the disk and start all over with the Mojave installer. You can use "diskutil" command in Terminal -- do a "man diskutil" to get more info.

When you need to restore your files, you can easily use the "tmutil" command line interface to restore files from a specific snapshot -- do a "man tmutil" to see more details and some examples.

However, before doing anything you need to check the integrity of your backups by trying a test restore using the command line "tmutil" command to another test disk.

Ask for more info if you need more help.

Good luck...

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Answer 2

dizzylizzy42 Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 18, 2019 6:38 AM in response to dot.com

Thank you dot.com. I did a clean install of Catalina to access my backup. After transferring my personal items to an external drive I am now able to rollback once again to mojave. There was no need to dabble in terminal. The brains from the apple orchard pretty much said the same thing except going into terminal. It was a wee bit of an inconvenience, but a learning experience nonetheless.

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Cannot restore MBP from network Time Machine backup

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