You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

stmccann Author

Level 1

16 points

macOS catalina destroyed backups

"Upgraded" to Catalina this morning - and due to poor performance, constant reboots, etc - decided to downgrade back to Mojave.

Yes - I have backups - on a Time Capsule - that goes back 4 years. Last backed up just prior to the clusterfoxtrot this morning.

Used a bootable USB from Mojave, erased the HD, installed Mojave, and went to restore via the latest Time Capsule backup.

POOF - not gone - but not recognizable as a backup option anymore. The Time Capsule currently has 5 files on it - 4 Sparse Bundle files from 4 other workstations - and the main computer backup - that is almost 2 TB in size, with the name of my main computer - is now called a 'Package' file - and not recognizable by Time Machine as a valid restore option, or by Migration Assistant.

Any help appreciated.

2017 21.5 inch iMac - yep, only 2 years old - 4 years of backups. When I set this one up after a previous computer had issues the restore from the Time Capsule worked perfectly.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 8, 2019 5:23 PM

Top-ranking reply

stmccann Author

Level 1

16 points

Posted on Oct 9, 2019 6:04 AM

Actually neither worked for me. I ended up going into the directory of the Time Capsule drive, and changed the filename extension to show it as a backup file. When I attempted to recovery again it saw the main computer's backup, and after about 14 hours, successfully restored the computer to the pre-disaster state.

I will NOT be upgrading this computer to Catalina anytime in the near future.

View in context

macOS catalina destroyed backups

Similar questions