HWTech wrote:
If you want to copy files from a TM backup, then launch the TM app and have the items transferred. You are not meant to use the Finder to navigate TM backups.
I can't. The original drive causes the Finder to repeatedly crash and relaunch, and eventually crash and not relaunch. Then all my other apps start hanging. Even shutdown hangs! I have to power-cycle.
So I want to copy them to another drive. Can Time Machine do that? I doubt it, because it's going to look for the original UUID (or whatever it is) and it's not going to find it. In fact, I just tried it, and Time Machine doesn't even show the folders and files of the unmounted broken drive. And if I did connect the bad drive, using TM would only copy the files back to that bad drive. (There's even more to the story about the bad drive, but I don't want to make this any longer than it has to be.)
Before trying the new drive:
Since I was having trouble with the older external SSD, I thought I'd init it (erase it) and recover a backup using Time Machine. No can do. It insisted I install an operating system on the SSD. OK, the SSD was originally a startup drive for my old Mac, whose Fusion HDD died. I needed to do a few final things on there I couldn't do on my new Mac. (Use original NeatVideo plugins in my main movie. [Details omitted.]) Oh, I wanted to install Mojave on the drive so that it would again work on the old Mac. No can do. Even though it's going to an external SSD, the new Mac refuses to have anything at all to do with Mojave. Hmmm. Maybe I should install Monterey or Somona on it. Even so, if the drive makes my machine whack out again, what good is it?
Anyway, it refused to do a restore, and at some point said I should use macOS recovery. OK. So I tried that. It said I should use Migration Assistant. OK, I started up Migration Assistant and at some point asked if I wanted to transfer user accounts, settings, etc. I was worried it was going to overwrite my internal SSD! So I aborted.
Anyway, I unchecked "Calculate all sizes" and got further. But still it aborted with the .DS_Store error. So I unmounted and re-mounted the drive. Copied over a large folder tree, and it worked! Hopefully the rest will come over nicely.
You are always told: make backups. Make backups! OK, I made backups. Now how do I get them back on my system on the new external drive? There doesn't appear to be a way using TM, only the Finder.
I have since gotten a new SSD: same capacity, twice the speed, and half the price! And I am trying to copy over one folder tree at a time. And a copy operation would sometimes be aborted due to the .DS_Store error; hence, my original post and this post.
