Topic: Having a Game Data/Settings Restore Issue with PS5

I bought a PS5 with VR2 in December '23. I only have seven VR2 games that I play regularly; one is No Man's Sky (>1100 hours since May '24 (I'm an old retired guy)). I have a 1TB thumb drive that I do backups to (don't trust PS+). I occasionally do full backups of my PS5, i.e., games, game data, and settings; however, more often I backup the game data and settings only (< 3GB vs. >237GB). I generally do a game data backup when something significant happens like getting a new ship in NMS or completing all 7 levels of squad play in Crossfire Sierra Squad or get a top score in Pistol Whip.

On 1/25, I meant to swap a living ship to reduce from 4 to 3 in my inventory but instead accidentally swapped out an expedition ship (Iron Vulture). No problem since I have a game data backup from 1/23. The result? All of my games, except for GT7 which has a disk, went away - nothing was restored and my games were gone. So, I did a full restore of all my games and data (237GB vs. less than 3GB) from July '24 and that worked (but all progress of everything gone). So, I tried again with the 1/23 file - same result and same result when I restored the 237GB games and data file. This time, I tried a game data backup from 12/24/24 - same result (all games deleted). What I've done now is restore the July '24 file again.
Has anyone actually successfully restored their game data and settings only (not the games but the game data) on a PS5? If so, can you provide some guidance?

In advance, thank you!

Nick.