Problems reverting back to Sierra from High Sierra

[frizbow]

Hey all – I'm in a bit of a kerfuffle at the moment and was hoping someone might be able to shed some light on this situation? I've searched through various forums but haven't had any luck. Many thanks in advance.

Since upgrading to High Sierra last week, my 15" MBP retina early 2013 began having display burn/image retention issues, as well as having a strange blueish tint on the screen that colour calibration doesn't help.

I'm trying to get back to Sierra to see if this gets rid of the issues. But – the only time machine backups I have available were made under High Sierra.

Would anyone know a way that I could restore Sierra (I have the installation formatted onto a USB drive) while still being able to restore all my data from a Time Machine backup? If that's not possible, is there any way beyond a fully manual backup that I could restore my files onto Sierra once I've installed it?

Many, many thanks!

 

[jbarley]

Have you looked into "Migration Assistant"?
What you are trying to do is what it was intended for.
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204350

 

[frizbow]

Have you looked into "Migration Assistant"?
What you are trying to do is what it was intended for.
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204350

Thanks for your reply! But I guess I'm worried that I won't be able to migrate files from a High Sierra Time Machine backup with Migration Assistant to Low Sierra? Does it not have to be the same operating system, or could it be I'm assuming wrongly?

 

[jbarley]

I can't speak specifically to your case, but migration assistant is commonly used to migrate data from one operating system to another such as when a person does a clean install with a newer system version.

 

[CoastalOR]

I'm trying to get back to Sierra to see if this gets rid of the issues. But – the only time machine backups I have available were made under High Sierra.

Would anyone know a way that I could restore Sierra (I have the installation formatted onto a USB drive) while still being able to restore all my data from a Time Machine backup? If that's not possible, is there any way beyond a fully manual backup that I could restore my files onto Sierra once I've installed it?

Here is a guide that might help:
https://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-downgrade-macos-high-sierra/

 

[Voenix Rising]

I don't know if this is the case when reverting from HS to Sierra, but I found myself in this situation when attempting to roll back Mojave to High Sierra. Migration Assistant balked at restoring from a newer OS to an older OS, leaving me no option other than to wipe the drive, install a clean copy of HS and then manually reinstall all my apps and move the data manually. It took the better part of two days to pull everything I needed off my Carbon Copy Clone and I keep thinking, "This is why I left Windows 10 years ago!"

While I was able to get my apps all up and running as they had been (lots of stuff copied from the Library folder) and my local mail folders migrated (import mailboxes), I ran into trouble when moving my iTunes library over. "You need to upgrade your OS to use this iTunes library."

Found a solution to that as well, but ended up spending most of the morning restoring now-missing album artwork.

All I can say is that Apple does not want you going backward, and does everything in its power to make it as difficult as possible...but it can be done.

Good luck!

 

[Fishrrman]

Voenix wrote:
"It took the better part of two days to pull everything I needed off my Carbon Copy Clone and I keep thinking, "This is why I left Windows 10 years ago!""
and
"All I can say is that Apple does not want you going backward, and does everything in its power to make it as difficult as possible...but it can be done"

Are you saying that you ALREADY HAD a bootable cloned backup close-at-hand?
Was it a backup of Low Sierra, or High Sierra?

If it was a cloned backup of your Low Sierra install, you could:
1. Boot from the CCC cloned backup
2. ERASE the internal drive
3. Open CCC and RE-clone the backup BACK TO the internal drive.

Easy as pie.
That's what cloned backups ARE FOR...

If the cloned backup was of the High Sierra install, then, yes, you would have to "move things manually". But... at least one can still DO that...