I don't understand most of that (but thanks for the info).
Back in 2013 I successfully restored my OS and files to a new hard drive from Time Machine backup without having to go online.
[I was under the (apparently mistaken) impression that restoring the OS from TM would also include the (invisible) Recovery HD, since that was part of my original installation and ostensibly would have been backed up as part of my disk. I was able to use my Recovery Disk Assistant thumb drive to gain access to Recovery HD (since that's all the RDA contains). At least the RDA = Recovery HD is safely stored on the thumb drive – and works as nicely as though it were ensconced on a hard drive partition. It just would have been nice to have it on the hard drive too.]
