Migration Assistant & downgrading OS

Todd Taliaferro wrote:

When I try to use MA, it won't let me select the time machine backup because it was created in Tahoe.

How do I restore the stuff I need from the time machine disk? There has to be a way to recover my personal info and ignore the rest, right?

I believe the Time Machine backups you can restore your personal account files from to a Sequoia system would have to have been created in Sequoia or an earlier MacOS. Backups created under Tahoe can only be read by Migration Assistant in Tahoe or later.

Try double clicking (to open) on the backup sets you can see in the Finder on your Tahoe Time Machine backup drive. I believe you can drag and drop files that are in those backup sets, as in a simple Finder copy, to restore them over to your Sequoia system.

It would be much more convenient to use Apple's built in Migration Assistant (or Setup Assistant). But I believe that can only be done using backup sets created under Sequoia or earlier, if you are migrating/restoring to Sequoia.

But you should at least be able to bring your files and folders over "manually" this way.

Todd Taliaferro wrote:

I hate Tahoe. Adobe apps run glacially slow and I can't get work done. So I decided to switch back to Sequoia after a week of frustration.

Maybe those apps are running slower so you have time to appreciate the new Liquid Glass designs of the user interface controls. They're positively beautiful! Just ask anyone (who's paid by Apple, of course).

I didn't use time machine when I used Sequoia

Ouch! That's gonna sting...

was told I should make a time machine backup in Tahoe anyway

Better late than never!

I'd be able to restore specific items like passwords, IDs, etc using Migration Assistant. I was told I could choose the files I needed and skip any system files that were incompatible with the older OS.

Who's telling you this nonsense?

When I try to use MA, it won't let me select the time machine backup because it was created in Tahoe.

Kudos to Apple for realizing that people on the internet are spouting nonsense and keeping you from corrupting your data.

How do I restore the stuff I need from the time machine disk?

Upgrade to Tahoe and restore from your Time Machine backup.

There has to be a way to recover my personal info and ignore the rest, right?

Not a chance.

Can someone help?

Alas, all I have are quips this time. I'm afraid you're stuck with Tahoe. There's no going back unless you have a backup from before you went forward.

There are some options, but they'll all take some time, effort, and perhaps money.

First of all, the problem is Apple data. Your 3rd party apps will hopefully be fine. The only risk is if they use some kind of funky Apple Core Data/Swift Data/whatever and that caused the operating system to update the data of 3rd party apps. I don't know if those technologies actually do that. I avoid any Apple data architectures like that. And I certainly have no idea which apps might employ such designs. But I sincerely doubt that Adobe would use any such Apple data technologies.

But there's also a clever trick for Apple data - iCloud. You can turn on each and every iCloud setting you can find. In theory, the only one you wouldn't need is iCloud Data, but I don't know the details of how your system is/was configured, so it would be safest to do iCloud Data as well. Once you can everything in iCloud, then you can just roll back the system to an earlier OS version and then switch on all of your iCloud data. After a couple of days, a few restarts, some swearing, some luck, you should have all your data back. This is where the money comes in. You might have to upgrade your iCloud package in order to have enough cloud storage for all of this. And of course, you'll have to do a full reinstall and restore under Tahoe to get all of your data into iCloud in the first place.

But if you weren't using iCloud data, then you don't have to worry about this. Any stand-alone files that weren't in iCloud and aren't part of some internal app database is something that you can just manually copy back from the backup, regardless of version. You just can't expect to copy any of the "Library" folders and expect them to work. They won't.

Then there are some oddball data like Mail. If all of your mail is online, then you'll be fine. You'll just have to download all your mail again. You often have to do that anyway. But if you had any mail in any "On my Mac" folders, then you're going to have a problem.

But regardless, you don't want to attempt any of this unless you have a good backup. You might get 90% of your data and settings back, but probably not 100%. And it might take some work, depending on how your system is/was configured.

My recommendation is to try to figure out why your apps are running slow and fix that.

Hi Todd,

I feel for you and if you want to ‘go back’ to Sequoia I will try to help you do what you want to do.

I assume:

That you have no backup of the original sequoia system! (No TM backup I hear)

That you have done a clean install of Sequoia.

That you have recreated the User accounts.

Either do not select any disk to do a time machine backup of this new Sequoia or if one is selected deselect. You don’t want TM to have any chance of messing with Tahoe backup – highly unlikely but be safe.

Launch Tahoe TM hard drive then open up the backup you want to get the data from eg the latest probably, then navigate to the users etc , as Steve626 suggested, drag and drop files/folders to the Sequoia accounts.

Do not drag ‘library’ of any sort certainly for the time being though if you had Mail messages in user/library. I can advise how you might solve that.

You might be successful with some user installed apps by also dragging the app from Application folder on TM to Sequoia application, most likely though with user installed apps you will have to reinstall them from scratch,

I reckon you’ll be able to restore almost all your data – Mail could be the tricky one.

(Once you've got every 'done' and are happy then we talk about a backup strategy for this Sequoia system)

Does the Tahoe Time Machine Backup drive appear and mount in Disk Utilities ?

Todd Taliaferro wrote:

And I won't be immediately upgrading my OS as soon as the newest thing is released ever again.

That's always a good way to avoid problems. Unfortunately, people usually only discover that after the fact.

I spent over a week trying to do just that. I had tons of recommendations from the community about things I could try to make my system work normally again. And nothing I did had any positive effect. It was maddening

I think this was the same problem. You were too quick to upgrade and then too quick to bail.

After reviewing your EtreCheck report, combined with reports from early adopters, the cause could have been various Electron apps, mainly Slack (which you were running). Apparently, the Electron framework used some kind of private Apple API to draw window corners or something. The reason why apps aren't supposed to use those private APIs is due to problems like this.

Another possibility is that "fan control" software. When did that get installed? Unlike most apps, this app can physically destroy your computer. It's possible that Tahoe could have gone into "throttle" mode due to this kind of low-level hacking.

And to be honest, your previous thread doesn't say this is a Tahoe problem. You said this has been an ongoing problem over the past year. You might just need to replace that old computer. I have a top-of-the-line Intel MacBook Pro from 2017. It sure won't run Tahoe, but it's noticeably slow even on Ventura. There's always a price to be paid for upgrades, even if you aren't paying right away with cash.