Can't restore my data from hard drive with time machine

So basically I recently backed up my things on an external 1TB Seagate hard drive via Time Machine on my Mac. I then restored my Mac to its factory settings. However when I plugged in my hard drive it didn't show up in my finder. I opened Disk Utility and it shows up there but when I tried to restore my data it wasn't able to find it. This is so weird and I'm so scared can someone please help me

vanessayu wrote:
And another thing, my mac is randomly turning off and then displaying a gray screen saying your mac shut down because of a problem. does this have someting to do with the disk
Sounds like the TimeMachine drive is defective.
Uplug it and reboot and see if your problems go away.
If your TimeMachine is broken it might be possible to do data recovery on it, you can take it to a local PC/Mac tech and they will image it so the files are accessible, then you can pick through the mess as long as it wasn't encrypted or Filevaulted.
TimeMachine uses a lot of placeholder files, basically the same name but minus the content of the files for each saved state.
It's a lot of work going through all the folders to find your original files but as long as the drive works the files should be able to be recovered.
Sorry about your problems, TimeMachine hasn't quite lived up to it's expectations and I try to warn everyone NOT to completely trust it.

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Can't restore my data from hard drive with time machine

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