Big Sur destroyed my MacBook

What a horrible tale of woe. I keep multiple backups (multiple Time Machine drives, clones) of all our Macs, and you just motivated me to do a second backup of my wife's iPhone which has scores of priceless photos.

What to do going forward? You presented many issues but I think the two most pressing questions are (1) how to handle your new M1 Mac, and (2) what might present the best chance of recovering your files from the damaged (or not fully functional) drive.

For (1), I believe the M1 Macs came in 2021 with Big Sur, you cannot put it on anything older than the MacOS it came with. So for that Mac, I think you need to stay with Big Sur. I suggest two Time Machine backup external drives (the Mac will alternate between the two drives, each will have a complete backup) that you keep current, plus a "clone" backup (e.g. Carbon Copy Cloner, or SuperDuper, or various others). It is also good to put your most irreplaceable files in some sort of cloud storage so even if, say, a fire or power surge destroyed all the computer equipment, those files would be preserved.

For (2), you want to find a product that at least claims to be able to recover files from the newer APFS file system -- that's the one used under Big Sur. If you can find reviews, look for ones that mention success with APFS. My worry about Recuva is that it mentions 10.6 or later -- 10.6 is a very old MacOS. Look into Disk Drill (which claims to be ready for Monterey the soon to be released APFS-based system) or some others, but you need something that works well with APFS. There are a number of powerful programs for recovery from HFS+ but APFS is not as well documented so it has proved to be more problematic. I wish I could give you a recommendation from personal experience, but as you can tell from my obsession with backups, my approach is more to have many backups and replace a drive from the backup when it fails (especially if the failed drive is APFS), because "repairing" an APFS drive is typically a low-probability-of-success thing to try.

Also, since you have a second (and a healthy) Mac, have you tried booting your problem Mac into Target Mode connected to the new Mac? This should show your old Mac internal drive on the desktop of the new M1 Mac and you MIGHT be able to copy files (maybe many files) from the damaged drive. It is certainly worth a try.

I hope one or two of these suggestions helps some, maybe. What you have experienced is everyone's worst nightmare. Keep the Time Machine drive safe, you might be able to simply copy files from it using Finder copy, although it works best under the Time Machine interface.

sandilash wrote:

Firstly... I had problems with it logging me out randomly or suddenly sleeping despite me being in the middle of working on it. Suddenly I only had a 50% viable battery despite it living almost constantly on the charger -

The fan ran almost constantly even if no applications were running or even open.

And yes I tried all the usual advice with resetting NVRAM, SCM etc. I

Rebooted using command-R into DU

However, when I chose to reinstall the destination drive part is blank - yet shows in Disk Utility. So I have a bricked MacBook, I've bought a MacBook Air M1 but am so hesistant about what OS to use.

Secondly, what is the current recommendations on really good recovery software.

MacBook Pro 13″, 11.0

No where do you say what exact mac is this...

There are at least 52 models of MBP released since January 2006— I suspect it has to be late 2013—2020?

The stable release of macOS Big Sur is 11.6

How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Revert your Mac to a previous macOS version
https://support.apple.com/en-lamr/guide/mac-help/mh15216/10.15/mac/10.15

Options—

Call Customer Support (800) MY–APPLE (800–692–7753)

or on line https://getsupport.apple.com/

or call AppleCare Support at 1-800-APLCARE (800-275-2273)

Outside the USA—Contact Apple for support and service by phone

See a list of Apple phone numbers around the world.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201232

I still have SCSI cables too, not sure why, but I used them on my PowerPC Mac many years ago!

Some guidance on Target disk mode is provided here:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/transfer-files-mac-computers-target-disk-mode-mchlp1443/mac

hthttps://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/transfer-files-a-mac-apple-silicon-mchlb37e8ca7/11.0/mac/11.0

Note that a Thunderbolt cable is required if one of the Macs is on Big Sur.

Not sure Target mode will work in your situation, but certainly worth a try.

It sounds like you have plenty of cloud storage -- make sure they aren't interfering with each other, however when they do their syncing. That can happen sometimes. I use Dropbox on my personal computers and my work computers use Druva Gov Cloud. The Druva Gov Cloud does complete backups of all our files; Dropbox I use for storage of most things that people typically keep in their Documents folders, so basically I have all those files in cloud storage (plus the local backups). But be careful if you use iPhoto or Photos Libraries, because some cloud storage does not preserve the complex Library structure properly.