Restore crashed external drive with Time Machine backup - greyed out!

[classies]

So my external hard drive crashed a couple of days ago, and ever since I have tried to restore the lost data with my Time Machine backup. However, when I enter Time Machine from the menu bar, the folders in the external drive is grayed out and I'm not able to restore them.
I've also tried Migration Assistant with no luck
Is Time Machine really only useful when you delete files by accident??? This is a total surprise to me!
What to do then?
Btw I'm on MacOS 10.15 Catalina (old computer)
Thx

 

[Fishrrman]

"This is a total surprise to me!
What to do then?"

I'm gonna get rocks thrown at me for saying this, but...

NEXT TIME... use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create your backups, instead of tm.

If you had been using either of the above, you'd be back up and running now.

OK, throw the rocks!

 

[classies]

Yeah thanks for the alternative suggestions, I will definitely look at using either CCC or SD next time...

 

[classies]

Ahem... Just checked Super Duper and it says this: Unfortunately, the software only works on internal drives and doesn’t back up data stored on USBs, CDs, and other external drives.

 

[Boyd01]

I have an external drive that is backed up by Time Machine and can restore files from the backup. Perhaps the external drive got corrupted and Time Machine replaced the good backups with the corrupt files?

FWIW, Carbon Copy Cloner can backup external drives. I use Time Machine, Carbon Copy and also BackBlaze cloud backups for all my important data. As you have (unfortunately) learned, one backup is not enough.

At this point, I'd try some disk repair software. Sorry, have not done that for many years and don't have a recommendation.

 

[classies]

I have an external drive that is backed up by Time Machine and can restore files from the backup. Perhaps the external drive got corrupted and Time Machine replaced the good backups with the corrupt files?

FWIW, Carbon Copy Cloner can backup external drives. I use Time Machine, Carbon Copy and also BackBlaze cloud backups for all my important data. As you have (unfortunately) learned, one backup is not enough.

At this point, I'd try some disk repair software. Sorry, have not done that for many years and don't have a recommendation.

Can I have you do me a favor? Unplug the external drive and see if you can restore the files in Time Machine. My theory is no you can't Btw I also have an online emergency backup of my files – but I really need this local backup to work as smooth as possible if my disk gets stolen etc.

 

[Boyd01]

I had a quick look but don't really have the time to dig further. If I unmount my external drive, I don't see a way to navigate to those files in Time Machine. I have rarely used Time Machine however, so I may be missing something. Found this article, but from a quick read it doesn't really address the issue of restoring files from a failed drive. My time machine disk is a network volume, FWIW

How to restore items for an external drive that’s backed up using Time Machine

Apple makes it hard to find external storage devices that are backed up using Time Machine, but itu2019s there.

www.macworld.com