Trying to do a Mac restore of my hard drive from my old MacBook Pro that I traded in for the Air. Problem is I want to restore to an external SSD which is same same 1TB as this MBP HD had. I would restore on the Air's internal but not with 256 GB. I also installed the same OS version of the backup on the External.
MacBook Air (M4, 2025)
Unless I'm mistaken, one can no longer boot a Mac from the Time Machine backup drive. This was possible with macOS Catalina and earlier versions, but no longer.
Time Machine also will not let you restore items that were originally on the startup drive to an external drive on another Mac.
In your case, your best option may be to simply mount the TM backup drive on your new Mac, and then drill down into the the backup set and drag/drop your files and folders from there into place on your preferred external drive. This is one of the very few times that navigating the TM backup with the Finder might be acceptable. Doing anything other than simple copying of your files to the external drive will surely result in corrupting the backup set, so DO NOT rename, move, delete or otherwise edit the file structure of the TM backup drive.
Unless I'm mistaken, one can no longer boot a Mac from the Time Machine backup drive. This was possible with macOS Catalina and earlier versions, but no longer.
Time Machine also will not let you restore items that were originally on the startup drive to an external drive on another Mac.
In your case, your best option may be to simply mount the TM backup drive on your new Mac, and then drill down into the the backup set and drag/drop your files and folders from there into place on your preferred external drive. This is one of the very few times that navigating the TM backup with the Finder might be acceptable. Doing anything other than simple copying of your files to the external drive will surely result in corrupting the backup set, so DO NOT rename, move, delete or otherwise edit the file structure of the TM backup drive.
Time Machine no longer “restores” an entire drive as it once did. The system volume is not backed up at all.
To restore, you must install a macOS version that is at least as new as the os that was in use when the backup was made. Once you have installed macOS, use Migration Assistant to restore your data.
If the data was backed up on a newer macOS than you have installed, it will ask you to upgrade the startup drive to that macOS version.
On an Apple Silicon Mac, if you try to boot from a startup drive that was not created on that particular Mac, it will require reinstalling macOS on that drive.
PokemonFan1987 wrote:
ok, I am getting myself a headache over this. For some reason it's not restoring everything. My applications are not being restored, my download folder in empty, and my non iCloud sync folders are also MIA. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. I will now do attempt #3
there have been so many divergent suggestions posted, it is very hard for readers to understand the EXACT step you are taking now.
What exactly are you doing? in deep detail, please.
One common mistake is to use FINDER to read Time Machine backups. This NEVER produces adequate result, because you are only seeing the last backup. To use Time Machine for restoring anything, you must use Time Machine app, not to be confused with Time Machine settings:
You're right, that can't be done. Sad face.
I do not recommend using the Finder in that manner though. The way to do what PokemonFan1987 proposes is to "Enter Time Machine" and navigate to the individual files / folders / items you wish to restore. Don't click the Restore button though. Instead, two-finger tap the item and choose "Restore To..." Choose the external disk.
This assumes any potential Permissions conflicts have already been addressed. If login credentials are identical there should be no objection. If the item cannot be written to an external device for that reason, using the Shared folder would be a quick workaround.
Yep that what I was afraid of but my issue is I want to boot from my external SSD drive and it won't let me keeps giving me error to reinstall then when I click on reinstall says something else. I just want to have my external drive Mac bootable so I can access my documents, games, applications and so on.
ok, I am getting myself a headache over this. For some reason it's not restoring everything. My applications are not being restored, my download folder in empty, and my non iCloud sync folders are also MIA. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. I will now do attempt #3
Boot from that Time Machine backup disk and choose the external.
Confused how do I do that?
what do you mean boot from Time Machine?
Time Machine won't let me do a restore
