Complete format of hard drive, then restore from Time Machine

[MoodyM]

I recently (2 months ago) got a 17" MBP, and I used Target Disk/Firewire to "clone" the contents of my 2 year old iMac onto it.

It all worked great, and went fine, however last night I attempted to use Boot Camp to create a 64GB partition to install Windows 7, and got the dreaded "The disk cannot be partitioned" error, "please format your HD and reinstall OS X" message.

I ran various tools (Disk Utility from OS X Install DVD, Disk Warrior, MainMenu, Onyx, etc) to try repair and perform maintenance, then I bought iDefrag and ran a full defrag overnight, but this morning I noticed it had failed half way through, and it too suggested reformatting the HD.

I have a full Time Machine backup on my 1TB USB drive (connected to my Mac Mini, it backs up to the MBP over the network) so my question is how easy is to it completely format my MBP hard disk and restore a complete Time Machine backup?

I'm completely panicking even about the though of it, I've never done a reinstall/format since I switched to Macs in July 2008!!

Thanks in advance.

 

[iBookG4user]

It's very easy, just do an erase and install and then you'll have the option to restore it from a Time Machine backup.

 

[Hellhammer]

Just boot from the install disk by holding option key and select the install disk with arrow keys and press enter. Then, open Disk Utility from menu bar and select your hard drive from left-hand-side menu and click "Erase" tab. Simply, click erase and wait for it to be erased. Then exit Disk Utility and continue installing OS X. At the end of it, it will ask if you want to migrate from TM backup, click yes. Plug in your external and select the stuff you want to transfer and let it do its magics and you're done.