Desperately need to restore from a backup!

[Detected]

My old iMac hard disk died and I got a new one installed.
My iMac now works, but I can't seem to restore from the backup file I have on an external drive.
It's not formatted as a Time Machine disk, but is an external drive with other files AND this backup file.

How can I access that file or restore from that backup?
I lost SO much work I really need this backup!

 

[rpmurray]

What program did you use to make the backup? It should also be able to do a restore.

 

[rm5]

Have you reinstalled macOS? That's the first thing I'd do, and then connect the drive and/or search for the files in question. It shouldn't be super complicated, so long as the system/program that you used to back up isn't complicated.

 

[Fishrrman]

This post will not help you THIS time.
But it WILL help you for "next time".

If you want backup THAT WORKS when you have "a moment of extreme need", in the future use either SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner.

I will be so bold as to claim that if you had a cloned backup created by either of the above two apps, you'd be "back up and running" already...

 

[ovbacon]

I see a lot of copy and paste in someone's future...😓

 

[Detected]

What program did you use to make the backup? It should also be able to do a restore.

I used timemachine. I now learned it is now the best 🤔

 

[Detected]

Have you reinstalled macOS? That's the first thing I'd do, and then connect the drive and/or search for the files in question. It shouldn't be super complicated, so long as the system/program that you used to back up isn't complicated.

So there is no way I can restore my mac from a ‘inProgress’ file?

 

[chrfr]

So there is no way I can restore my mac from a ‘inProgress’ file?

The "inProgress" is not a complete backup, so no.