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Level 2

305 points

Restoring from a Time Machine back-up - puzzlement!

Hello - I've read here: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203981

Yesterday, I decided to wipe the hard drive on my iMac and reinstall Catalina from my Time Machine back-up. When I had to choose WHICH back-up to install, I noticed something which I felt was rather odd. Instead of simply choosing a particular date/time of the back-up to use, I had a choice of which hard drive to select too! There were many more dates available on one of the disks than the other. I took a photograph of what I saw to show what I mean:-

Have you ever encountered such a thing before? HD and HD1 - as I’m sure you can see.

SHOULD it be like this? Is it a phenomenon of macOS Catalina perhaps?

I decided NOT to use my Time Machine back-up at all. I did erase my hard drive ……… and then did much ‘fiddling’ to get Catalina back up-and-running again on this machine. Everything seems to be working but I’m keeping my external hard drive in its original state for now - I’m NOT making any back-up for the time-being,

I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this. Thanks.

iMac 27" 5K, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 24, 2019 4:03 AM

Best reply

John Galt

Level 10

141,622 points

Posted on Oct 27, 2019 12:08 PM

deggie's reply is correct.

Rather than concern yourself with the reason TM assigned unique names to the restore source, you really ought to start from the beginning. Describe the end result you are seeking.

The reason is important. You erased that Mac's startup disk, and now you want to restore a backup. Restoring a startup disk from a backup erases it first (TM tells you that) so erasing as a separate step wasn't necessary.

Furthermore, restoring the most recent backup recreates the exact same state that existed prior to erasing it. It gets complicated, because if you select "Macintosh HD" (or "HD 1") you are restoring its Local Snapshot. Time Machine tells you that too. That's a fine idea if your goal is to undo something you did subsequent to that backup's creation.

So, what you want to accomplish isn't clear to me.

Although a peculiarity of this site often results in similar or identical answers (often, existing replies don't appear until a new one is posted) unless I have something constructive to add I don't disturb a Discussion in which its OP is already receiving competent assistance. That's just me. I don't intend to impose that practice upon anyone, and in this particular case there's nothing to add to "you select the most recent backup," regardless of its name.

That's why I didn't reply. I'm replying now because you asked... but your question really needs more explanation: Why did you erase the startup disk?

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Restoring from a Time Machine back-up - puzzlement!

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