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Restoring a Monterey system back to a Catalina from TM

I have a system that I upgraded from Catalina to Monterey. It seems to be unstable. I cannot seem to restore the Catalina system. When I view the volumes in Disk Utility I see a macOS Base System with 12.2.1. Is this preventing the restore to a prior version? What happens during the restore is it starts the preparing phase and just never returns. When I go back into Disk Utility the restore target drive is unmounted.

So, am I stuck with Monterey?

Posted on Mar 12, 2022 5:16 AM

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Posted on Mar 12, 2022 5:39 AM

TimeMachine cannot restore the OS. Your have to do that as a separate operation and then use TM to restore your personal data, applications and etc.


Downgrading from Monterey is not recommended, it can be done, but here you can get assistance to solve your problems.


When I've downgraded, I wiped the drive (be sure you have good backups ... maybe a pair of them) and then installed the desired OS from a bootable flash drive. Your create the bootable drive dead first ... again maybe a pair for security.


Erase and reinstall macOS - Apple Support


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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 12, 2022 5:39 AM in response to coltrane58

TimeMachine cannot restore the OS. Your have to do that as a separate operation and then use TM to restore your personal data, applications and etc.


Downgrading from Monterey is not recommended, it can be done, but here you can get assistance to solve your problems.


When I've downgraded, I wiped the drive (be sure you have good backups ... maybe a pair of them) and then installed the desired OS from a bootable flash drive. Your create the bootable drive dead first ... again maybe a pair for security.


Erase and reinstall macOS - Apple Support


Mar 12, 2022 6:53 AM in response to coltrane58

Below will WIPE ALL DATA and there is No Recovery - Period


To perform this action will require booting from a Bootable Installer


This will have to be performed from a Qualifying Computer to run the version of macOS to be made on the Bootable Installer. Example : Bootable Installer of Catalina would have to be done on a computer that Qualifies to run Catalina.


Once that is done read on for preparing the Destination computer  >> Only works on Intel Based Apple Computers.


Extra Special Notation regarding the Touch ID equipped Apple Computer.


About Startup Security Utility and Must Enable from Recovery Mode the ability to boot from External Drive Before Attempting 


1 - Shutdown computer and disconnect all external drive Except the newly created Bootable Installer.


2- Restart and immediately hold the OPTION key until the Startup Manager appears and choose the USB Drive. 


3 - It will present options >> Disk Utilities >> View >> View ALL attached Drives. 


4 - Choose the Upper Most Drive ( not the volumes indented and list below ).


5 - The drive normally is called Apple Media or Apple SSD - that is the drive to Erase and format as APFS with the GUID Partition Map.


6 - Once that is done >> backup out of Disk Utilities and choose install macOS. 


7 - Follow the prompts and it may automatically reboot several time. 


8 - Upon a final reboot - Setup Assist will present with the newer version of macOS.

Mar 12, 2022 5:57 AM in response to ku4hx

So restore no longer works as before? I don’t know how to create a bootable drive. If I install a clean operating system I can’t just restore applications. I would have to restore OS related stuff, items in the Caches and Group Containers, etc. I seem to be totally screwed. In the meantime I have a screen just taunting me with “Preparing to restore…”

Restoring a Monterey system back to a Catalina from TM

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