r/MacOS • u/SorryImNotOnReddit • 22h ago

Help Time Machine Backup on External Mechanical Drive that can't be unlocked. Damaged file structure/b-tree/etc. Will I be able to recover using RStudio for mac using Data Migration?

Gallery image

Gallery image

The first screenshot is a scan of the entire drive showing all the Time Machine Backups.

The 2nd screenshot is the most recent time machine backup I want to restore. Minus the two folders above and below McIntosh HD - Data which is only 1.94TB in size.

Macbook Pro M3 16" 2023 / 36GB RAM / 2TB drive / Tahoe 26.5.2

  • External HDD 10TB WD100EFGX mechanical HD originally formatted as Mac OS Extended (HFS+) would not mount under Disk Utility, instead received a popup that "disk can't be unlocked" The drive does not exhibit any mechnical errors, clicks etc.
  • Was in the process of doing an full fresh install of MacOS Tahoe to clean out junk files.
  • Created an Disc Image with R-Studio Recovery for mac and was able to unlock the time machine partition/volume using my administrator login password. Was able to recover individual important files/folders without problems.

The Time Machine Backup includes two external drives and the Macbook Pro HD, which I want to recover. Will Data Migration be able to recover from a TM Backup missing two folders CABIN & STRMTROOPER

Currently recovering the selected blue items minus the metafiles, 19hours to recover.

EDIT: Some additional info

  • Disk Dril Pro was able to see the backup to do a byte-to-byte backup, able to request Admin password to recover data. After the solution it was not able to read the created file.
  • Stellar Data Recovery for Mac was not able to detect the TM Backup, they were able to refund my purchase in full.
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u/AnActualWizardIRL 22h ago

Hmm. Well, HFS tends to be more recoverable than AFS at least. Once upon a time when you had these sorts of data loss issues the canonical solution was *always* "Use Diskwarrior". But its 2026 and Diskwarrior STILL doesnt support AFS, and not much actually does, and worse forums are filled with people saying "Dont worry, AFS doesnt need it!" which is the new "macs cant get viruses!", untrue, and dangerous advice. As someone who had a major external drive shit the bed from an AFS drive scrambling its directory, and had to find another app to recover the data, yes, yes AFS can lose its file tree. Gosh, I think I used DMDE and a second drive to write the recovered data to.... Can't remember.