HELP!! Restore from Time Machine filled up my HD, now Freeze

[avarex]

Hope someone can help me. 2 issues.. seem complex to me..

Issue #1: I upgraded to Catalina on my iMac, then decided I wanted to go back to Mojave. I followed instructions to restore from Time Machine. HOWEVER, on 2 occasions it gets about 90% through the restore then stops with error that disk cant be restored do to errors.

Now it appears that I have (2) harddrives that are appearing as full on my Mac. (when I open disk utility, I see 2 harddisks 1. "harddrive" 2. "harddrive-data". each say only 17GB free. (when my original HD after I installed Catlina was 500GB free.

NOW the problem is I cant write anything to this harddrive, nor can I erase it.

I created a bootable disk with Mojave on it, but there is not enough room on my "harddrive" to install it on.

can someone explain what is going on? which of the 2 I am seeing is my original harddrive? why are they being bogged down with mystery data? how can I erase it?


2nd issue: When I click restore from Time Machine, I can only see backups from Dec, 18, 2018 (day I got my computer) and Dec 23, 2019 (the day I installed Catalina) I don't see my 100+ back ups that I had on it with Mojave all year (I checked and they were there before I started up and clicked restore from back up.


What is going on? I think my computer probably tried to run a backup for the Catalina OS on Dec 23, did it overwrite my Mojave backups?

 

[avarex]

update#1: I read a little online to be dangerous. I opened disk utility and actually deleted the Macintosh HD-Data, ta da this suddenly freed up all the space on my original drive. I was then able to run the installer from my bootable Mojave disk.
Ill update with what I discover in Time machine after the install. I hope my backups are still there, and I can migrate them! ugh

update #2: okay it didn't make it through the install and I got this error " Mac OS could not be installed on your computer volume contains a macOS or OS X installation that may be damaged"
no idea what do do next. Help.

 

[Fishrrman]

Is your external TM drive still a backup of your Mojave install?

I don't use TM and I would NEVER recommend that anyone use it.
I ALWAYS recommend bootable cloned backups created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

But in any case...
IF you have a good TM backup, here's what I'd do:
PRINT THIS OUT and check off the steps as you go along.

1. Boot to INTERNET recovery (NOT to the "recovery partition").
Command-OPTION-R at boot (you'll need a wifi password if you use wifi).

2. Once the internet utilities load, open Disk Utility

3. Go to the "view" menu and choose "show all devices"

4. NOW you can see the physical drive itself (the very top item in the list on the left).

5. Click on the topmost line it to select it, then click the ERASE button.

6. You want APFS with GUID partition format.

7. Erase the internal drive.

8. Now connect the external TM backup (if it's not already connected).

9. Open time machine

10. Restore to the internal drive.

I -hope- TM can do this for you.
It would be "child's play" if you had a bootable cloned backup (CCC or SD).

 

[avarex]

Is your external TM drive still a backup of your Mojave install?

Thank you for taking the time to reply... HOW can I tell if my TM drive has a backup of my Mojave install? someone said that when I installed Catalina, TM probably overwrote those back ups with the new complete backup with the CatalinaOS.

EDIT: I was able to erase my HD-yikes then starts up from my bootable Mojave disk I made using Dishkmaker, then install Mojave on my computer. Now I am in the process of migrating files from my TM back up to my HD. I

I will do a cloned back up for future for sure... I think I have one from dec 2018 but my old brain forgot that was something I needed to do periodically and then I let TM take over ...

 

[komatsu]

I don't use TM and I would NEVER recommend that anyone use it.

As a matter of interest why?

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Cloning is much better, more reliable, on an external hard drive is bootable and much quicker.

TM is the very pits.