MacBook Pro M1 crashed and won’t boot from Time Machine

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MacBook Pro M1 crashed and won’t boot from Time Machine

I leave my MacBook Pro 14 M1 on all the time and plugged in. Today I discovered it with no battery power. The MagSafe wire was slowly flashing amber. I assumed it wasn’t plugged in properly so the machine went off. When trying to reboot, it needed a startup disk and it wouldn’t start up from the Time Machine back up. The process is requiring me to reinstall Sonoma (the OS version I’ve been running for quite a while, resisting Sequoia), but the device is not allowing me to do that either. Message says “the volume cannot be downgraded.“ What the heck?! I hope someone can help. TIA

[Edited by Moderator]

Original Title: MBP14 (M1) crashed - won’t boot from Time Machine

MacBook Pro 14″

Posted on Aug 9, 2025 5:04 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 9, 2025 8:51 PM in response to Mama-Gaga

Mama-Gaga wrote:

When trying to reboot, it needed a startup disk and it wouldn’t start up from the Time Machine back up.

That's to be expected. Time Machine backups are not bootable. You can use a Time Machine backup of a startup disk to restore a startup disk – but you need something else to boot from to do the recovery.

That could be Recovery mode or could be a bootable external drive that you had prepared in advance just in case you might need it.

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