My startup SSD external disc FAILED. I need advice on what to do next. Please help.

My 2 TB SSD (normally my startup disk) encountered a problem, rebooted my iMac 2017, Catalina 10.15.4, 16 GB ram. It restarted with the iMac internal disc, and the SSD was unmountable and unrepairable. I did the disk utility erase SSD to Mac OS journaled with GUID partition. So far, so good. And my backup disk is ready and waiting to restore. But when I go to select restore from backup, it says no backup available, because I never backup my iMac internal disk, I backup the SSD. Somehow I can't figure out how to tell the backups on the Time Machine disk to restore the SSD completely.

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Nov 2, 2020 7:19 AM

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

69,242 points

Posted on Nov 2, 2020 7:04 PM

Boot into Recovery Mode (Command + R) or Internet Recovery Mode (Command + Option + R) where you will be given the option to "Restore from a Time Machine Backup". Just make sure to select the external drive as the destination.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203981

View in context

My startup SSD external disc FAILED. I need advice on what to do next. Please help.

Similar questions