Can't boot from external time machine drive

[kw1]

I have a 15" early-2011 MBP running 10.8.5 that was recently afflicted by Radeongate. I used the workaround to move the ATI* and AMD* extensions to a different folder, and was able to at least log in and backup to an external drive via time machine. I then tried to move the extensions back and try a few other things involving gfxCardStatus, but now, when I boot up (even in single-user mode), I get a "Unable to find driver for this platform: \ "ACPI\" message, and it doesn't boot. I've done some searches and people recommend booting from recovery mode. However, when I do so, the only option is the default "Macintosh HD". My time machine external drive is plugged in, but for some reason, it's not an option in recovery mode.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[mannyo1221]

The time machine drive is not bootable, it's simply a flat backup of the whole machine. To access the files you need to be boot into recovery or internet recovery mode. These options will allow you to restore your entire computer from the time machine backup, you don't actually use the recovery mode to access your files.

If you are only seeing the Macintosh HD partition, then it sounds like your HDD does not have a recovery partition, so you need to try internet recovery which downloads the recovery data and will boot from that.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201314

 

[Fishrrman]

Folks, here's why I -always- recommend either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper over Time Machine for backups.

A CCC/SD cloned backup is FULLY BOOTABLE, and will appear EXACTLY as does your internal drive (as it was current to the last incremental backup).

If the internal drive has a problem of ANY kind, it's only two minutes from that point to being fully "up-and-running" again -- IF you have that cloned backup nearby...