Can't Restore from Time Machine (won't find destination disk)

[decoysa]

So my imac was working fine and then today i turn it on and it wont boot up into OSX instead it takes me to the OSX utilities splash screen. From there i try and repair the disc via disk utility but it keeps saying it can't repair the disc.

So i then erased the drive and decided to restore via one of my time machine backups. My problem is when i get to the "select a destination" page it just says "scanning for disks" forever and never finds the imacs hard drive !

The drive is formatted to osx journaled so it should appear, im getting a bit worried.

I would try reinstalling mountain lion from an install disk but i purchased it on the apple store as an installer.dmg and dont' have it on disk !

Im starting to get pretty worried ! I can't understand why it just says "searching for disks" forever even though disc utility clearly shows the disk exists !

Any help would be appreciated

Cheers

 

[Fishrrman]

I realize this post won't help with your current problem, but it CAN help you in the future.

In the future, don't rely on Time Machine as your backup. TM "looks easy" (just "flick the switch", eh?) but can let you down in "a moment of extreme need" -- as you're discovering right now.

Instead, download the FREE version of CarbonCopyCloner 3.4.6 from this page:
http://www.bombich.com/download.html

Use it to create a BOOTABLE clone backup of your internal drive.

With a bootable cloned backup, if your internal drive won't boot, just boot from the clone instead, and go to work on the problem. All your system files and data files will be there.

If you had to, you could even boot from the clone backup, re-initialize your internal, and then re-clone the external back to the internal.