I moved from Catalina to Sonoma 14.3.1 a few days ago, on my 2018 Mini.

There's a weirdness with screen sharing, but I can ignore that. More
"interesting" was my attempt to restore a file today. I choose "Browse Time
Machine backups" and it gives me the black screen with the Finder window in
the middle. After a few secs a set of black "windows" line up behind the
Finder window.

And that's it. No display of backups behind the front one, the red
close-window button does nothing, the cancel button does nothing, and the
history ladder normally shown up the RHS of the screen, is not showing. No way
out.

After some minutes, I press the Mini's power button. This puts up the usual
panel with Restart/Sleep/Cancel/Power-off options. Those which are clickable,
are ignored.

Eventually I decide I have no option but to power off via the power button and
then power on. This restores normality.

Now: the TM disk is the same HFS+ it's been for years. Do I really have to
reformat it as APFS and lose two years of backups? Actually everything
important is backed up elsewhere, but from time to time I want to get back
something *unimportant*.

Any suggestions?

--
Tim

On 19/02/2024 10:38, TimS wrote:
> I moved from Catalina to Sonoma 14.3.1 a few days ago, on my 2018 Mini.
>
> There's a weirdness with screen sharing, but I can ignore that. More
> "interesting" was my attempt to restore a file today. I choose "Browse Time
> Machine backups" and it gives me the black screen with the Finder window in
> the middle. After a few secs a set of black "windows" line up behind the
> Finder window.
>
> And that's it. No display of backups behind the front one, the red
> close-window button does nothing, the cancel button does nothing, and the
> history ladder normally shown up the RHS of the screen, is not showing. No way
> out.
>
> After some minutes, I press the Mini's power button. This puts up the usual
> panel with Restart/Sleep/Cancel/Power-off options. Those which are clickable,
> are ignored.
>
> Eventually I decide I have no option but to power off via the power button and
> then power on. This restores normality.
>
> Now: the TM disk is the same HFS+ it's been for years. Do I really have to
> reformat it as APFS and lose two years of backups? Actually everything
> important is backed up elsewhere, but from time to time I want to get back
> something *unimportant*.
>
> Any suggestions?
>

That smacks of a graphics problem, especially as you mention there is a
screensharing issue as well.

Do you have an alternate video cable you can try - either HDMI or
Thunderbolt (is that on the 2018 mini, I forget?)

Also, is there another monitor you can try, especially a lower res one
where the demands won't be so intensive? If so plug that in temporarily
and see if you can reproduce the Time Machine issue.

As for the disk format, I thought modern Macs were happy with older
devices formatted HFS+, just that you couldn't format new ones and that
includes TM drives. At the very least I would expect it to put up a
warning message to say not supported.

--
Bruce Horrocks
Surrey, England

On 19 Feb 2024 at 17:54:23 GMT, "Bruce Horrocks" <07.013@scorecrow.com> wrote:

> On 19/02/2024 10:38, TimS wrote:
>> I moved from Catalina to Sonoma 14.3.1 a few days ago, on my 2018 Mini.
>>
>> There's a weirdness with screen sharing, but I can ignore that. More
>> "interesting" was my attempt to restore a file today. I choose "Browse Time
>> Machine backups" and it gives me the black screen with the Finder window in
>> the middle. After a few secs a set of black "windows" line up behind the
>> Finder window.
>>
>> And that's it. No display of backups behind the front one, the red
>> close-window button does nothing, the cancel button does nothing, and the
>> history ladder normally shown up the RHS of the screen, is not showing. No way
>> out.
>>
>> After some minutes, I press the Mini's power button. This puts up the usual
>> panel with Restart/Sleep/Cancel/Power-off options. Those which are clickable,
>> are ignored.
>>
>> Eventually I decide I have no option but to power off via the power button and
>> then power on. This restores normality.
>>
>> Now: the TM disk is the same HFS+ it's been for years. Do I really have to
>> reformat it as APFS and lose two years of backups? Actually everything
>> important is backed up elsewhere, but from time to time I want to get back
>> something *unimportant*.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>
> That smacks of a graphics problem, especially as you mention there is a
> screensharing issue as well.
>
> Do you have an alternate video cable you can try - either HDMI or
> Thunderbolt (is that on the 2018 mini, I forget?)

I think I'm short of cables.

> Also, is there another monitor you can try, especially a lower res one
> where the demands won't be so intensive? If so plug that in temporarily
> and see if you can reproduce the Time Machine issue.

I could try switching the second screen to another Mini. Then I could (a) see
if my Mini still goes weird in TM, and if so screenshare back to it from teh
other Mini and see what that gives me.
>
> As for the disk format, I thought modern Macs were happy with older
> devices formatted HFS+, just that you couldn't format new ones and that
> includes TM drives. At the very least I would expect it to put up a
> warning message to say not supported.

That's what I read on Apple's web site. That is, it should just accept my HFS+
TM drive I used under Catalina, and use it presumably like older TM versions
did.

--
Tim