Time Machine - Help !

[valyno]

Hello everyone,

Here it is: after 9 years of loyal service, my MBA 6.1 mid 2013 has just reminded me of its great age: after a system update (Big Sur), my MBA displays the famous flashing folder on the screen when I reboot.
I realize that my SSD has just given up the ghost.

I reboot in Rcovery Mode and run the disk utility, which sees "disk0"/ OS X Base System Apple Disk image.
I guess it's an Apple network disk that was mounted during the CMD + R boot...
No trace of my internal SSD.
I also booted on a Linux Mint key, and GParted didn't see an internal disk either.

I ran the recovery utility from a Time Machine backup, since I save to an external hard drive plugged into my router.
The utility can see the disk I've plugged into my MBA via USB, and when I launch the procedure, it asks me for the password to access the backup (yes, I've encrypted my back-up, I'm afraid...).
After entering the password, the continue button turns blue in the "Select backup source" window, but immediately afterwards an error window appears:
"Unable to open backup - An unexpected error occurred when opening the backup (Error 0)".

Yet I had explored my Time Machine less than a month ago and tried to restore a file, without a hitch, from the MBA when it was still working...

I plugged my TM disk into my Windows PC, and since the disk is NTFS formatted, the TM content is visible.

As the backup is encrypted, the saved files are split into 65536 Kb files... unusable as they are.

Question 1: Is it possible to resolve this unexpected error when opening the backup from my MBA?
Question 2: Is it possible to access my files from Windows by reconstructing the archive?

Thank you in advance for your help...
Valyno

 

[kitKAC]

OK, I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to do but to restore your Mac, you need to reinstall macOS and then use Migration Assistant to migrate the data from the TM backup to the machine.

You can't access the files from Windows as the TM backup is an encrypted sparsebundle and Windows has no idea what to do with it.

 

[valyno]

Hi @kitKAC,

My current SSD is dead. So I will have to install a new one.
Then I will want to use my Time Machine back-up to restore my system and data on the new SSD.

As I have not received my new SSD yet, I have booted my MBA with the macosx recovery tool and I have selected the tool Restore from a Time Machine backup. This is when I have the error 0 showing up after entering the password of the back up.
I am concerned about this error 'cause it seems that the system is not able to start the process of restoring (it should ask me where to restore, right?).

I have launched the Reinstall OSX tool, and it proposes me to install MacOS Maverick and to select a hard drive (either the one containing the Time Machine back-up or the USB key that is also plugged on my MBA).

I really fear that my Time Machine back up will not be usefull once I have installed my new internal SSD... hence my question about reading the Time Machine backup from windows, as I have no other Mac at my disposal...

 

[valyno]

Hello,
After a long battle, I have been able to install Sierra, from here Mojave which was able to detect my new SSD (Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB + Sintech adapter) and then install Big Sur.
Once Big Sur has been installed, I have been able to fully restore my MBA from my Time machine!

Thank you @kitKAC for the advice, you were true!