Restore snapshots from corrupted Time Machine HDD

Question

Level 1

19 points

Restore snapshots from corrupted Time Machine HDD

I have an WD Elements Portable as TM drive and for the second time in 2 years this model got corrupted (not the same device of course, but a replacment of the first). Of course, I will not use this drive again and I have a second redundant TM drive from Seagate that never has any issues. However, is there any way to recover the snapshots from the corrupted drive? The HDD utility seems to be able to access them somehow:

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Erste Hilfe auf „WD Elements 2TB“ (disk5s2) ausführen

Medium entsperren …

Dateisystem überprüfen und erforderlichenfalls reparieren …

Volume ist bereits deaktiviert.

fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/rdisk5s2 ausführen

Den Container-Superblock prüfen …

Den Kontrollpunkt mit Transaktions-ID „84190“ prüfen …

Den Space-Manager prüfen …

Die Space-Manager-Free-Queue-Bäume prüfen …

Die Objektzuordnung prüfen …

Die Strukturen des Verschlüsselungsschlüssels prüfen …

Volume „/dev/rdisk5s2“ wird überprüft.

Den APFS-Volume-Superblock prüfen …

Das Volume „WD Elements 2TB“ wurde durch „storagekitd (2236.101.1)“ formatiert und zuletzt von „apfs_kext (2332.101.1)“ geändert.

Die Objektzuordnung prüfen …

Den Schnappschuss-Metadatenbaum prüfen …

Die Schnappschuss-Metadaten prüfen …

Schnappschuss 1 von 29 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-16-122517.backup, Transaktions-ID 3413) prüfen …

(tuncated)

Den Verbleibsstatus des gelöschten Schnappschusses prüfen …

Schnappschuss 29 von 29 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-05-19-101641.backup, Transaktions-ID 84161) prüfen …

Den Fsroot-Baum prüfen …

error: (oid 0x415) apfs_root: bt: invalid o_oid (0x26237a)

error: (oid 0x415) apfs_root: bt: invalid o_xid (0x14864, expected 0x148d0)

error: (oid 0x415) apfs_root: bt: invalid o_type (0x10000003, expected 0x10000002)

Fsroot-Baum ist ungültig.

Das Volume „/dev/rdisk5s2“ mit der UUID 91D3E9BC-A391-4D55-9190-20CFEFBA3AB5 ist offenbar beschädigt und kann nicht repariert werden.

Zugeordneten Platz überprüfen …

Das Volume „/dev/rdisk5s2“ mit der UUID 91D3E9BC-A391-4D55-9190-20CFEFBA3AB5 konnte nicht vollständig überprüft werden.

Exit-Code für Dateisystemprüfung lautet 8.

Der ursprüngliche Zustand (deaktiviert) wird wiederhergestellt.

Entsperrtes Medium aktivieren …

Das Überprüfen oder Reparieren des Dateisystems ist fehlgeschlagen. : (-69845)

Aktion fehlgeschlagen …

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(sorry for German)

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 15.5

Posted on Jul 14, 2025 12:58 AM

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Answer 1

Owl-53

Level 10

102,397 points

Jul 14, 2025 1:53 AM in response to gernophil

If the data on the Corrupted External Drive is that important to you

Stop used the drive completely and do not even attach the drive to the computer

The more times one attempts to access the data the more read and writes are placed upon the drive

This will make it even more difficult for a Professional Mac-centric Recovery Service to recovery any data

Rotational or Spinner Drives have a higher probability of recovering some data where as SSD drives have a very low probability of recovering any data

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

68,606 points

Jul 14, 2025 1:22 PM in response to gernophil

While it is certainly possible to have two drive failures, I suspect the problem may lie elsewhere especially if both drives were new. Unfortunately it would require someone analyzing that external drive and even better the previous TM drive that failed to see how the failures compare.

I could see a problem with the drive being connected to an adapter, dock, hub, or the cable, or possibly a hardware issue with the USB port on the computer or a hardware issue with the Logic Board (or memory if removable).

You can check the health of the external drive by using DriveDx (free trial period) and posting the complete text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper on the forum editing toolbar. You will need to install a special USB driver in order to access the health information on the external drive. FYI, I'm not certain if this special USB driver is compatible with Sequoia (or its most recent updates).....I seem to recall someone may have had issues uninstalling the USB driver on Sequoia (there was a bug report on the DriveDx website for something related to the special USB driver).

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Answer 3

gernophil Author

Level 1

19 points

Jul 17, 2025 12:11 AM in response to HWTech

I have the suspicion that something is off with my ports for a while now. I have an external WD SSD that randomly disconnects about three to six times a month. It immediately reconnects, but this is still not good. This happens since Sonoma and there are a lot of people having this issue so I first believed thiss to be a software issue. Also this never happens with any of my HDDs and it also didn't happen for the TM drive while it made the backup. Additionally, this happens with all three USB-C ports of my MacBook Pro M1 and I don't have issues with any other USB-C peripheral, so I doubt it's a port issue. I also don't know, if these two issue are connected somehow.

Still it's weird. Is there a way to have the Macbook analyzed "non-invasively"? I did the "Apple Diagnosis" and this did not find any issues. It's still on AppleCare+ till September.

I hope I find the time to run DriveX on the HDD this weekend. Unfortunately, I don't think I own the old drive anymore. But I need to double check that. I hope I wasn't that dump to simply reformat and use the same drive again. Is there a way to check the TM drive history even for deleted drives?

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