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I accepted to restart for 'Security Updates' yesterday, but pretty sure macOS then attempted to install Catalina! (I was on High Sierra before). My Mac restarted but the install kept hanging at 'Estimating Time Remaining...' (I tried restarting several times, then also leaving overnight to no avail). It seemed other people had this issue, but that there was no clear way to resolve it. I tried to restart in Safe Mode, but that failed too.

Hence I restarted in Recovery Mode, then erased Macintosh HD (just the OS container) and installed High Sierra again on this drive. This worked, which I was relieved about, as my last Time Machine was several months ago. However, I now have none of my apps/files linked and it would be a nightmare to have to do everything again now. I also lost a load of content from my Sublime (I guess it usually caches these, but I can't seem to find the cached files anywhere). I also can't add to my existing Time Machine backup, the new install is separate.

Is there a way to restore the installation I had before macOS decided to ruin my setup? I had a lot of custom apps and things set up, which will take ages to do again. Or failing that, how would I go about linking all my apps and files to this new installation?

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    "erased Macintosh HD" - you say 'just the OS container', but High Sierra doesn't have separate OS/Data volumes, it's all in the one volume unlike newer macOS with a "HD" & an "HD-data" partition… so if you did how that reads, then you erased all your data. Could you clarify? If in fact Catalina had been installed [even partially] & you do have HD & Data partitions, then High Sierra won't know to look for your user data on the other partition.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 25, 2022 at 8:42
  • I know this does not help you know, but before doing any update (especially a full upgrade!) you should make a backup in future.
    – X_841
    Commented Sep 25, 2022 at 9:06
  • Thanks @Tetsujin - I can only assume that Catalina split the drive into two, so I have both the HD and HD-Data now. Makes sense that High Sierra won't know how to look for my user data - do you know what the solution is here? Do I need to erase both containers somehow? Slightly scared to do this!
    – Oli C
    Commented Sep 25, 2022 at 10:08
  • OK - that's not going to be easy, because High Sierra will not install onto an APFS drive. It wants to see HFS+… which it will then, ironically, convert to APFS [single volume] as part of the install. You will have to get the data backed up from what you have there already, before going any further, with a full re-format. I wouldn't try to use your existing TM drive to do this; make a new copy. You might then be best to Migrate from the TM drive at first run of your new install, then manually pick out newer files from the later copy. See apple.stackexchange.com/q/315880/85275
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 25, 2022 at 10:17
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    I've never tried doing this. If you put Catalina on the 'new OS partition' it might be OK. I actually think what happened is you jumped too soon when it was halfway through - the conversion of the drives & databases to the new format is a really, really long task. Restarting in the middle will have 'broken' it. You definitely need to copy your data off there before trying anything else, just in case, because you're starting from a very unknown state.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 25, 2022 at 10:24

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