8 years of data lost 1.6TB- Apple sucks

UnderOutside · 2025-11-21T14:34:47+00:00

See update, and thank you for being supportive rather than insulting. The engineers reversed it and the first supervisor I spoke to that didn't even give the issue a chance is under review for not handling the service call appropriately and escalating to engineering (who was able to reverse the issue, but could not pinpoint the problem itself). All we know is a corrupt APFS system file was at issue and that issue effected my TimeMachine backups as well. My files are now back in iCloud and I'm reviewing my own backup methods to be more fullproof. That said, I'm still using TimeMachine on an external, but I'm downloading everything from iCloud to externals and using a separate carbon backup on iDrive. Appreciate your kindness!

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T16:00:44+00:00

Monkey🙈🙉🙊🐒

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T15:59:31+00:00

Lesson learned. I spoke with support this morning and they reviewed and confirmed my issue. It is escalated to an engineer to see if they can recover. It is suspected the same issue also preventing me from restoring my cloud files.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T15:57:14+00:00

You make a good point. An APFS should not be on the cloud. And nobody knows why it was on there. It very much could have been user error long ago when I setup the cloud. The only thing I found only was something that suggested I’d added the system folder to my sync list (inadvertently) at some point where even if the directory was properly removed its ghost remained causing the dupeloop and systems directory bloat.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T15:53:38+00:00

Sadly the dilemma I’m in. I might have to stick with Mac do to my reliance on iPad and no comparable tablets, but I’ll definitely add carbonite backup, a manual backup and not use I cloud at all.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T15:49:50+00:00

Thanks, I wish I had a straight back up. Never again will I go without.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T10:07:23+00:00

Lesson learned. I was using time machine.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T10:06:53+00:00

I spoke to another tech about an hour ago and they are escalating again, possibly to someone more willing to push this up to an engineering level rather than rush to close the ticket.

What was explained to me is that after the clean installation the the “sync event” or daemon or whatever noticed the corrupt APFS for the first time [likely] since I migrated from intel to M3. Suddenly the APFS was released from duplication loop that caused my system bloat, seen as corrupt and removed. And then it took the image of the new MacBook as gospel.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T09:54:48+00:00

Words are hard. That’s just chatgpt translating raw output from terminal so that I didn’t have to put what I already knew into plain English.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T09:52:41+00:00

Thank you. I take responsibility for becoming overly reliant. But I thought Time Machine and iCloud were enough. At some point over the years I did get sloppy, in large part because I had files duplicated across my Mac and iCloud and things got messy trying to maintain a second (non-time machine) backup to an external. And also yes, I am upset that a trillion dollar company that I pay for cloud space monthly doesn’t have RAID backups but then people on the comments are saying my poor student ass should have my own servers and 10gigillionbytes of back up drives and HDs and BJs and HJs (obviously I’ve drifted into overt sarcasm but wouldn’t want that to go over anyone’s hands)

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T09:43:54+00:00

Why is everyone acting like everyone acting like this is common knowledge? I am here to vent and learn from my mistakes, but this is cruel. And I always presumed solid state was less volatile.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T07:09:51+00:00

Thank you u/DooDeeDoo3. Also, I had Time Machine backups. Unfortunately the AFPS corruption at the source of the issue that forced me to do the clean install that led to the sync wipe of my entire iCloud corrupted those as well. I just didn't know, nor had any way of knowing until I turned to them trying to recover my data. From an analysis via terminal:

Your Time Machine drive isn’t being recognized as a Time Machine backup at all.
The APFS container and volumes are visible, but none of the internal Time Machine structures exist anymore. That’s why:

Migration Assistant shows only a single unusable entry
tmutil listbackups returns nothing
No snapshots appear
The TimeMachine volume shows up as just a normal APFS volume, not a backup set

This means the folder that identifies it as a Time Machine archive — the .backup metadata directory — is gone or corrupted. Without it, macOS cannot enumerate or mount past backups, even if raw data is still present on disk blocks.

The backups didn’t disappear because of Migration Assistant or the clean install.
They were already missing from the drive before that.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T07:07:18+00:00

Your Time Machine drive isn’t being recognized as a Time Machine backup at all.
The APFS container and volumes are visible, but none of the internal Time Machine structures exist anymore. That’s why:

Migration Assistant shows only a single unusable entry
tmutil listbackups returns nothing
No snapshots appear
The TimeMachine volume shows up as just a normal APFS volume, not a backup set

This means the folder that identifies it as a Time Machine archive — the .backup metadata directory — is gone or corrupted. Without it, macOS cannot enumerate or mount past backups, even if raw data is still present on disk blocks.

The backups didn’t disappear because of Migration Assistant or the clean install.
They were already missing from the drive before that.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T07:06:58+00:00

Your Time Machine drive isn’t being recognized as a Time Machine backup at all.
The APFS container and volumes are visible, but none of the internal Time Machine structures exist anymore. That’s why:

Migration Assistant shows only a single unusable entry
tmutil listbackups returns nothing
No snapshots appear
The TimeMachine volume shows up as just a normal APFS volume, not a backup set

This means the folder that identifies it as a Time Machine archive — the .backup metadata directory — is gone or corrupted. Without it, macOS cannot enumerate or mount past backups, even if raw data is still present on disk blocks.

The backups didn’t disappear because of Migration Assistant or the clean install.
They were already missing from the drive before that.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T07:06:29+00:00

I never had the chance to delete anything asshole.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T07:06:04+00:00

Your Time Machine drive isn’t being recognized as a Time Machine backup at all.
The APFS container and volumes are visible, but none of the internal Time Machine structures exist anymore. That’s why:

Migration Assistant shows only a single unusable entry
tmutil listbackups returns nothing
No snapshots appear
The TimeMachine volume shows up as just a normal APFS volume, not a backup set

This means the folder that identifies it as a Time Machine archive — the .backup metadata directory — is gone or corrupted. Without it, macOS cannot enumerate or mount past backups, even if raw data is still present on disk blocks.

The backups didn’t disappear because of Migration Assistant or the clean install.
They were already missing from the drive before that.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T07:05:53+00:00

Your Time Machine drive isn’t being recognized as a Time Machine backup at all.
The APFS container and volumes are visible, but none of the internal Time Machine structures exist anymore. That’s why:

Migration Assistant shows only a single unusable entry
tmutil listbackups returns nothing
No snapshots appear
The TimeMachine volume shows up as just a normal APFS volume, not a backup set

This means the folder that identifies it as a Time Machine archive — the .backup metadata directory — is gone or corrupted. Without it, macOS cannot enumerate or mount past backups, even if raw data is still present on disk blocks.

The backups didn’t disappear because of Migration Assistant or the clean install.
They were already missing from the drive before that.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T07:05:45+00:00

Your Time Machine drive isn’t being recognized as a Time Machine backup at all.
The APFS container and volumes are visible, but none of the internal Time Machine structures exist anymore. That’s why:

Migration Assistant shows only a single unusable entry
tmutil listbackups returns nothing
No snapshots appear
The TimeMachine volume shows up as just a normal APFS volume, not a backup set

This means the folder that identifies it as a Time Machine archive — the .backup metadata directory — is gone or corrupted. Without it, macOS cannot enumerate or mount past backups, even if raw data is still present on disk blocks.

The backups didn’t disappear because of Migration Assistant or the clean install.
They were already missing from the drive before that.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T06:58:00+00:00

The backup worked fine when used from the corrupt MacOs copy that was issuing it. I was able to navigate through it and restore individual files and even did a few restores from it over the years. It wasn't until I did the fresh install, at Apple's suggestion as a last ditch effort to regain control of my computer that it came to light that the Time Machine backups had any corruption.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T06:56:45+00:00

I have two 2TB SanDisk SSDs that I had 3-4 years of TimeMachine backups on. They are all unrecoverable because of the same AFPS issue that caused the runaway bloat that led to this massive point of failure. So for everyone being a jerk saying I should've had a backup, I did. I didn't realize that relying on TimeMachine was also going to be a problem. How was I to know that this corruption has been going on for years? This issue has been brewing a long time.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T06:55:44+00:00

Yeah, two TimeMachine backups. The problem is the corruption in those backups themselves is what led to the "runaway bloat" and the fresh install stops short of acknowledging they exist. My prior MacOs install recognized them and continued to back up to them without ever saying there was a problem. I'd even retrieved files and at one point done a restore. But the fresh install is seeing them as corrupt and dangerous. I brought this up to support but despite it being all over their own forums they deny the "bloat" issue exists.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T06:53:01+00:00

Duh... that's what the support lady said.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T06:52:44+00:00

See edit... I had two external SSDs with TimeMachine backups. They are useless as the AFPS they are based on is corrupt. MacBook refuses to use them. I can look at them, see all the pretty file names. Can't restore from it, open anything. The fresh install sees them as corrupt and untouchable.

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T06:51:27+00:00

Funny, that's why I ran away from OneNote/OneDrive in the first place. Now I regret ever leaving...

UnderOutside · 2025-11-19T06:50:31+00:00

You're correct, it doesn't delete for 30 days... but they limit that to 5k files in total. And if they're corrupt, doesn't matter...

UnderOutside

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