I erased all content from the drive using command + R.

Then connected the Time Machine backup drive from someone else who wants to take over this MacBook.

They have Monterey 12.4.3 and I have Monterey 12.4.

Now it’s trying to download monterey from the internet and telling me to use migration assistant.

Isn’t base Monterey OS already installed on a partition on this computer which stays even though I format the rest of the drive?

And isn’t Monterey OS part of the other persons Time Machine backup?

I don’t have wifi and using cellular data so I can’t download 12GB Mac OS install.

Should I have just used migration assistant and connected both computers?

I thought a clean format and reinstall from Time Machine would have been better?

I’ve been forced to do a clean reinstall of Sonoma cos the update absolutely destroyed my MacBook. After hours of going through a combination of all the different processes that Apple says to do I finally got it installed.

Now how do I restore Time Machine backup? I’m getting the “you haven’t selected a location for Time Machine backups” message.

I’m scared to set up my drive in Time Machine in settings in case it wipes what’s already on there.

Can someone please provide simple step by step instructions for how to do this?

See screenshots attached for reference.

Thanks

So after putting off updating Mac OS far longer than I should have, I wanted to finally get the newest update onto my MacBook Pro. Looking at the hardware requirements, my 13 inch 2017 MacBook Pro should qualify.

However, at the end of the (lengthy) download/install process, I always get an error message saying there was a "-69716" error. Looking it up online, it seems the way to solve this is to back up the files on your computer, perform a clean install to erase the hard disk to remove whatever problem is preventing the update, update the system, then bring back the files.

Now here is where the question comes. While I can do that, it's a bit tedious to manually copy everything back, and there might be important things in the system folder related to application settings that are harder to copy over. So here is my question: If I back up everything via Time Machine then go through the process of the clean install and update, is it possible to use Time Machine to automatically restore the files while preserving the update? This would be far simpler and help make sure I don't forget anything.

I seem to remember I did something like that when I first got my laptop. That is, the Time Machine drive had the stuff from the older laptop and it just copied it all over while still retaining the newer OS that was on the new laptop. But that was a while ago so I'm not sure that's the case, and maybe even if it was it wouldn't work here. So, would that work here? Could I back up onto Time Machine, perform the clean install, update to the newest version, then use Time Machine to get everything back while still preserving the update?