Hi there. I had a 2015 MacBook Pro with OEM 128 GB SSUBX Apple/Samsung SSD. I found an OEM 256 GB Apple/Samsung SSUBX SSD for a reasonable price so I decided to do the upgrade. (These are both drives native to this Mac model, and both were included with machines sold at retail from Apple. My 256 GB was a working pull from another 2015 Mac.) I made a Time Machine backup (hard drive attached to AirPort Extreme, so essentially a Time Capsule), and also made a bootable backup on an external USB hard drive, using SuperDuper!. I confirmed the bootable backup worked. I also made a Monterey 12.0.1 installer on a USB thumb drive.
I then swapped the drives, and confirmed the new drive worked. The new drive had Big-Sur pre-installed on it and booted up just fine. I also confirmed the new drive had an existing Recovery Partition for Big Sur. I then booted off my USB Monterey install drive. Using its Disk Utility I confirmed the "Base System" on the SSD was intact, and then proceeded to erase the main Big Sur partition. I then installed Monterey no problem. I also confirmed that the Recovery Partition was updated to Monterey as well.
Since I had a Time Machine backup, I tried using Migration Assistant to restore from that Time Machine backup, but simply could not do it. None of the saved users showed up. All it would let me restore was system files and stuff like that, which is useless. So, then I tried using SuperDuper! to clone the working external USB backup back to the SSD. I booted into the USB drive, and did the clone, which completed successfully. Except it didn't. When I tried to boot off the internal drive, I just got the flashing ?folder icon. So I went back into recovery mode and deleted that OS partition again, and finally decided to do a clean install again from the USB installer. Again, this worked just fine.
1. I know that Time Machine is borked in Monterey for some people. Perhaps this one is more borked because it's an HFS+ drive connected to an AirPort Extreme? Or is there something I'm doing wrong that makes the users in the backup invisible? There were three users that should have been backed up. I do know that for my Mac mini, my Time Machine backup restore does work, but that backup is on an internal APFS hard drive, and there is only one user.
2. The external USB clone backup boots the machine just fine. So why does my SuperDuper! clone back to the internal SSD not work? Does it have something to do with the existence of that Recovery Partition? Would Carbon Copy Cloner have worked?
Anyhow, now everything is working fine, but I could only accomplish this by doing a clean install. Luckily there was no significant data that I had to migrate over, but it did still take me a while to configure everything like it was before. I was hoping that Time Machine would have worked so I wouldn't have had to spend the hour or so to reconfigure everything to the three users' preferences.
I then swapped the drives, and confirmed the new drive worked. The new drive had Big-Sur pre-installed on it and booted up just fine. I also confirmed the new drive had an existing Recovery Partition for Big Sur. I then booted off my USB Monterey install drive. Using its Disk Utility I confirmed the "Base System" on the SSD was intact, and then proceeded to erase the main Big Sur partition. I then installed Monterey no problem. I also confirmed that the Recovery Partition was updated to Monterey as well.
Since I had a Time Machine backup, I tried using Migration Assistant to restore from that Time Machine backup, but simply could not do it. None of the saved users showed up. All it would let me restore was system files and stuff like that, which is useless. So, then I tried using SuperDuper! to clone the working external USB backup back to the SSD. I booted into the USB drive, and did the clone, which completed successfully. Except it didn't. When I tried to boot off the internal drive, I just got the flashing ?folder icon. So I went back into recovery mode and deleted that OS partition again, and finally decided to do a clean install again from the USB installer. Again, this worked just fine.
1. I know that Time Machine is borked in Monterey for some people. Perhaps this one is more borked because it's an HFS+ drive connected to an AirPort Extreme? Or is there something I'm doing wrong that makes the users in the backup invisible? There were three users that should have been backed up. I do know that for my Mac mini, my Time Machine backup restore does work, but that backup is on an internal APFS hard drive, and there is only one user.
2. The external USB clone backup boots the machine just fine. So why does my SuperDuper! clone back to the internal SSD not work? Does it have something to do with the existence of that Recovery Partition? Would Carbon Copy Cloner have worked?
Anyhow, now everything is working fine, but I could only accomplish this by doing a clean install. Luckily there was no significant data that I had to migrate over, but it did still take me a while to configure everything like it was before. I was hoping that Time Machine would have worked so I wouldn't have had to spend the hour or so to reconfigure everything to the three users' preferences.
