My understanding has always been that you can do a complete restore of OS X from Time Machine, but I think clarification and resolution of any doubt/confusion that this thread may be causing will be helpful.
Thanks.
TIME MACHINE BACKUPS ARE NOT BOOTABLEbut you can restore your system from a Time Machine backup by booting from the Recovery Drive.
When you boot from the Recovery Drive you have four options available…
Restore from a Time Machine Backup. This literally copies your system from the Time Machine backup to the hard drive and you can choose to restore from any point in time. For example a couple of weeks ago something happened to my Keychain and I was unable to logon or do anything to get into my system. So I booted from the Recovery Drive, chose Restore from a Time Machine backup, picked a time from the previous evening when I knew the Keychain was working and Restored my system with no real loss of data. 😎
Reinstall OS X — which is exactly what it sounds like. The latest version is downloaded from the internet, and you get a fresh clean installation of OS X. As this is a normal install you can also run Migration Assistant and recover your files, apps, settings, etc. from a Time Machine backup or another bootable volume.
Get Help Online — I haven't tried that one yet but it seems pretty obvious
Disk Utility — a full version of Disk Utility that can be used to run Disk First Aid, partition/repartition/Erase the HD or volume.
Originally Posted By: artie505
DW has been pretty much everyone's number one choice...supported by many "DW fixed what TTP could NOT fix" posts. (All the apps I've run across that perform tasks similar to those of DW and TTP cost in the $100 range, but that's by no means a given.)
Not quite ][i]everyones's number one choice. Not a hit on Diskwarrior, it is a fine and useful app, but I have used TTP for many years and have never found a situation it could not handle. But that is just my experience.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
Not a hit on Diskwarrior, it is a fine and useful app, but I have used TTP for many years and have never found a situation it could not handle. But that is just my experience. 
