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PearBook Author

Level 1

4 points

Time Machine restored Catalina rather than Big Sur

I made a Time Machine backup to a hard drive using the latest Big Sur version (11.5.1). I've just bought a 13-inch 2020 Macbook Pro (not M1) and to my horror, restoring this backup did so with Catalina 10.15.5!

It seems that my files are present (thank goodness) - including those just before the backup. Strangely, the latest version of Xcode is also present - but refuses to run since the MacOS version is too old!

I'm really struggling to find anything else on the internet addressing this problem - and would like to know what is going on. I hope that nothing else has gone wrong. Should I manually now update this to Big Sur (again)? I don't want to corrupt my Time Machine Backup.

Many, many thanks.

Posted on Aug 4, 2021 12:14 PM

Top-ranking reply

SnickZ.

Community Specialist

Posted on Aug 5, 2021 7:43 AM

Hey Pearbook,

Thanks for posting your question in Apple Support Communities.

The best thing to do going forward is to now update your Mac back to Big Sur. Updating it back will not damage any of the data that you have on your Mac and if you run into any issues, you still have the backup of Mac OS Catalina saved so that you can revert back if needed.

You can upgrade back to Big Sur by following the steps in this article: How to upgrade to macOS Big Sur.

Best Wishes

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Time Machine restored Catalina rather than Big Sur

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