Disk Utility on my MacBookPro

Yes, this seems typical Catalina.

Time Machine seems to be working just fine with myAirPort Time Capsule, but my MacBookPro Disk Utility does not see my TC data disk anymore, unless I select the option "Verify backup" in Time Machine.

I would not expect to see the disk in the TC from Disk Utility.. only the Time Machine backup prior to Catalina.

Apple decided to change the name of the backup from sparsebundle to backupbundle. They have given no explanation as to what, why or how to use this new naming scheme but nothing else was prepared for this.. so I guess developer teams are not told what other teams are doing.

When you start verify backups, you are opening the backup and it then can be seen by disk utility. But that is not really useful at all.

More important at this stage is getting your Time Capsule visible in Airport Utility.

About the only way to do this is a factory reset of the TC. No files are lost on the hard disk.

Reconfigure the TC from scratch and use different names, short, no spaces and pure alphanumerics. Passwords same rules but can be longer.

If you still have issues accessing the TC tell me the model, how old and how it is configured in your network.

With new names you will need to point Time Machine to the new location of the backup but it should be able to continue working.

As for your files.. are they copied inside the Time Machine backup or on a separate folder under the main sharepoint.

Copying the data out of a folder on the main disk should not be an issue although doubtless with Apple you have permissions issues. But if it is inside the Time Machine backup it might be difficult.. Tell me after the reset if you can find them or not and where they are.

Ok.. well done.

I would make sure your

heavy files folder

is backed up to a USB Mac formatted disk, TODAY.

Another user.. to quote

Catalina (or as I've taken to calling it, the Isle of the ******).

I must configure from scratch an iMac which used to belong to my late father which was recently formatted and I am trying to do this with Migration Assistant from my AirPort TC

Assuming that means you have a full backup of the iMac on your TC, if Migration won't work use setup assistant in the recovery partition. Recover the full hard disk to either the Mac internal disk or USB disk plugged into it.

What you are trying to achieve is the iMac running again on its last known good configuration.

From there you create a clone of the Mac without any file vaults.. and from that you could migrate to Catalina if pain is your thing... Honestly I would stick to Mojave or whatever until about .6 revision of Catalina or just after they move to the next Named integer version. By then it should be mostly bug free.

I know it is very round about.. but one thing you learn.. Never trust Time Machine.

Make clones before you smash a working install. A clone like CCC does which is bootable means no files or emails or music or photos is ever lost.

Ok.. that adds some problems. But also might make things easier.

You must run the iMac on Catalina.

Do not use the same user name on both at this stage. Let migration assistant do that for you.

Create a bootable clone of the MBP to USB drive.. and ensure it does boot for you. CCC is free to use for a month fully working. But I think is worthwhile to buy license. You can use it on all the computers in the house.

Now use the clone plugged into the iMac.. and just have a go booting from it. This could fail utterly.. but I have won!! If the hardware is not too different and Mac OS sorts out its drivers pretty well on boot, it might just work. If so you now have an image of the MBP converted to iMac.. which you can now clone to the internal disk of the iMac.

There is going to be some problems.. you will need to fix computer name.. and UUID of the hard disk could be copied and that is wrong. To repair it you might need to .. google search as I am as yet avoiding Catalina.. like the plague.

If that trick does not work, you can migrate from the clone plugged to iMac. Have a try.. but still keep it off the network until you can login again and change the computer name so it is different to MBP. This is more correct than above!!

In theory you should also be able to migrate from live computers.. so run Migration Assistant on both the MBP as source and the iMac as target and see how that goes over the network. It might do better with handling the filevault. My Catalina experience is zero but again this method has worked when I used it in the past.