Can't see TM backup when attempting full restore on MacBook

Question

Sadly, without any warning, the HD on my MacBook died yesterday.
Happily, I've been making regular Time Machine backups of this machine - onto an internal drive in my Mac Pro via Firewire (whenever I wanted to update my TM backup I would plug the MacBook into the Mac Pro via Firewire and somehow the MacBook would find that drive and do it's thing)
So today I bought a replacement HD for the laptop, installed and formatted it via Disk Utility (after starting up the MacBook from the 10.6 disc). Then I connected the 2 machines via Firewire, as I've done previously to back up the MacBook.
But when I try to restore from Time Machine backup (the bottom choice from the installer disc drop down menu) no backups appear to be available. The window in which backups would, I assume, appear so they can be selected remains empty.
As an alternative, I copied the sparse bundle in it's entirety to an external USB drive (perhaps not the thing to do now I've been reading this forum) and plugged that into the MacBook. Still unable to select a backup to restore from.
I suspect I'm doing something horribly wrong. Should I potentially be able to restore my MacBook from this backup? How?
Any help appreciated

Answer 1

Duane Morrison wrote:
Thanks for explaining.
The partitions I DIDN'T choose to backup only contained stuff that (I figured) was not part of the operating system (eg large sample libraries, video files etc).
Oh, ok, that's not what you posted before.
And since my last post the OSX Installer has been able to recognise the Time Machine backup on the USB drive - so I'm assuming it is complete...?
Complete enough to be recognized as containing OSX.
Now however there seems to be another problem - I can't get the restore process to complete. The restoring window starts up fine and restores files up to around 10%. Everything appears to be going smoothly until I receive the message "The Mac OSX installation couldn't be completed".
Is it getting 10% done, or is there 10% remaining?
I've tried this 4 times now with similar results, though each time the crash log indicates that different files have crashed the restore.
What files? Are they in your system folders or user folders?
It's possible that whatever went wrong with your HD corrupted some files, and those changes were backed-up, so the restore is bringing them back.
Unless you already tried it, you can try the restore again, but select an earlier backup, from before the problems started.
An alternative is, start up again from the Snow Leopard Install disk, but select +Disk Utility+ from the Utilities menu, and use it to erase your internal HD. Then quit Disk Utility and install OSX from the disc.
When your Mac restarts, use +Setup Assistant+ after the welcome video to transfer all your stuff from the backups. See #19 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) for details.
When it restarts, before using any apps, download and install the 10.6.5 "combo" update. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1324 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.