Time Machine Restore Stalled: Data Recovery Options Needed
A colleague of mine seems to have lost all her data despite having Time Machine running. Disk Utility reported that her MacBook Air was badly corrupted, and the only option was to erase and restore from her Time Machine drive. She therefore ensured Time Machine was up to date (it was), booted into Internet Recovery mode (Command-Option-R on startup), erased the internal drive, and reinstalled macOS. It then prompted her to choose whether to restore from a Time Machine backup or another Mac. She selected the time machine backup, and everything seemed to go well until the final stage ("Updating System Settings") when migration assistant stalled. Left overnight, it remained stuck. Her only option was to cancel the restore, leaving her with a freshly erased internal drive containing only system software and no personal data. When she tried Migration Assistant from Finder, it encountered the same issue.
This situation leaves her with only one copy of her data on the Time Machine drive and no way to restore it. We searched online and discovered that thousands of other Mac users have experienced this problem, but no readily available solutions appear. Attempting to restore to a different Mac also failed, suggesting that the supposedly reliable Time Machine backup might be compromised.
We appreciate that applications may have to be reinstalled but that's nothing compared to having to recreate all your personal data.
Here's the crux of the issue: she can see the backup files on the Time Machine drive, via Finder but online advice warns against dragging and dropping them back onto the main drive due to potential corruption issues related to "sparse bundles" (a concept we do not yet understand). Therefore, despite diligently maintaining an up-to-date Time Machine backup, she potentially faces complete data loss. Is there a solution to either force Migration Assistant to complete the process or enable safe drag-and-drop functionality from the Time Machine drive?
