Can't restore Time Machine backup to Macintosh HD
Today I found my Mac shut down. It won't boot again anymore. When I try to turn it on, it just shows the Apple logo, a loading bar and after 1/3 progress it just shuts down again.
After some research I learned how to access the Disk Utility by pressing Command ⌘-R at boot time. Apparently the problem is with the hard disk, since when I try to repair it it says that it can't be repaired and needs to be formatted.
I have an external disk where I backed up the whole system using Time Machine. I'm just not sure how to proceed now.
After accessing the Disk Utility I have 4 options, the first of which is restoring a Time Machine backup. The thing is that if I try this one it lets me restore a backup only in the other partition of the external HD, and not on the disk on my Mac. Why is that? What shall I do?
Since it says you need to reformat, what you need to do is:
- Boot into the Recovery Partition
- Click "Disk Utility"
- Select "Macintosh HD"
- Go to the "Erase" tab
- Select the format as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"
- Choose a security option from the security option section(I would recommend zero-pass since this is still your Mac) NOTE: If you have an SSD, the security options button will be disabled. This is normal
- Hit "Erase"
- It may take a while or be stuck. Don't worry. Give it time. The progress bars and estimated time on OS X suck
- After it is done, close Disk Utility and go to "Reinstall OS X"
- Select Macintosh HD and then proceed as if you were setting up a new iMac without your old backup
Go to "Window" --> "Log Window" and try to find some errors. For me helped reformat my drive to GUID (GPT) partition table in Disk Utility.