Time machine backup in Monterey on 14” MacBook Pro Issue- help required

[Macintosh101]

i all, I have a new 14” MacBook Pro running Monterey. I have an external SSD that I set up to be a time machine backup- APFS encrypted with a password. I made my first few backups and everything went fine, I can see the time machine backups fine in the time machine utility, the password works fine, etc.

However, I always like to test my drives in case I needed to return this MBP for a replacement, of if the MBP failed etc and I needed to restore from the time machine backup on a new machine.

First of all I tested the drive in the Migration utility. The utility recognises the drive and the password, but then says it cannot use the data to migrate as: “The selected source cannot be
used for migration. Volume does not contain an installation of macOS or OS X.” Does anyone know why I’m getting this message?

Second, if I go into Recovery Mode, the recovery utility again recognises the external backup drive and asks for the password. When I enter the password however, the drive disappears from the list of drives completely, immediately after entering the password , meaning that if I needed to I would not be able to do a restore.

Any ideas about what is happening here? I’m completely confused!

 

[Silverlox]

Suggest you make an appointment with the Genius Bar at an Apple store. It's the easiest, best way to resolve this. And its free.

 

[Macintosh101]

Suggest you make an appointment with the Genius Bar at an Apple store. It's the easiest, best way to resolve this. And its free.

Thanks 👍 I guess I wondered if anyone had run into a similar issue and if there was a simple workaround.

 

[karl-os]

First of all I tested the drive in the Migration utility. The utility recognises the drive and the password, but then says it cannot use the data to migrate as: “The selected source cannot be
used for migration. Volume does not contain an installation of macOS or OS X.” Does anyone know why I’m getting this message?

Same issue here using Monterey.

Time machine backs up the data ok to an external SSD. But when testing it through Migration Assistant or Recovery Mode, it cannot detect the backup.

 

[Macintosh101]

Same issue here using Monterey.

Time machine backs up the data ok to an external SSD. But when testing it through Migration Assistant or Recovery Mode, it cannot detect the backup.

Thanks. Reassuring to know others are experiencing the same thing.

 

[jg66ue]

There is a thread over here addressing a lot of these issues. Worth adding to it so we can get some traction.

Time machine experiencing multiple issues on Monterey (my personal issue resolved)

Hey guys, I have a really strange issue (at least for me) with Time Machine after upgrading to Monterey. Normally, a new complete backup takes between 3 to 5 hours for me using a 4TB USB 3, my Passport drive as the time machine drive. After upgrading to macOS Monterey, the system is very...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[karl-os]

My Time Machine problem is fixed. I ran "First Aid" using Disk Utility on my main Macbook hard drive (not the backup external drive).

Now Time Machine correctly backs up to the external drive. Before I ran First Aid the backups did not show up in Finder, and Time Machine was reporting Latest Backup as "never".

Worked for me, maybe worth a try for others too.

 

[jg66ue]

My Time Machine problem is fixed. I ran "First Aid" using Disk Utility on my main Macbook hard drive (not the backup external drive).

Now Time Machine correctly backs up to the external drive. Before I ran First Aid the backups did not show up in Finder, and Time Machine was reporting Latest Backup as "never".

Worked for me, maybe worth a try for others too.

Hey Karl,

Did you run it in Recovery mode?

Gonna try this, though, I think I already had tried this.

 

[karl-os]

Did you run it in Recovery mode?

No, just standard Disk Utility.

 

[jg66ue]

No, just standard Disk Utility.

ah okay. I tried this. ran the backup in safe mode. didn't work. still says no backups took place even though external drive clearly has 1.5 TB of data on it. But no files in finder. No acknowledgement of backup. Not recognized by other computer as a backup drive. Oh well. Not enjoying monterey at all at this point.

 

[zarathu]

One of the well known difficulties of early adapters of new OS’s is that things that the beta testers never did are now being done, and have to be fixed. Its this way since Apple Mac System 6, and its this way for windows, and OMG is IS it this way in Linux.

 

[thisisnotatest]

I had the same problem and experienced the same error:

“The selected source cannot be used for migration.
Volume does not contain an installation of macOS or OS X.”

I was able to work around this by: (1) first booting up my new Mac with a new user, and then (2) accessing the Migration Assistant once logged in as that user.

Migration Assistant allows you to restore from a Time Machine backup once logged in as a user.

 

[Fbir4742gbsudv]

[SOLVED]
i was able to fix the
“The selected source cannot be
used for migration. Volume does not contain an installation of macOS or OS X.”
error on a 23' 14" MPB M2 by simply waiting.
Luckily, my backup drive enclosure has an LED that flashes while data is being read or written to the drive.
After unlocking the drive via entering its password and waiting, about 5 minutes later (I‘m using an SSD), the drive icon on the screen switched from a generic yellow drive icon to a blue Time-Machine-Drive icon and i was able to restore my mac without any further problems.
Good Luck!