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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chas_m" data-source="post: 1640270">Yes, your Time Machine backup has all the stuff -- the system, the apps, your media, documents, everything.But you can boot the computer off a Time Machine drive to put a system on a new hard drive. That's essentially the difference between a Time Machine drive and a clone.The Time Machine backup not being bootable is not a problem if you've, say, bought a newer Mac, since it has a system already on it. But having only a Time Machine backup isn't that helpful if the new hard drive doesn't yet have a system on it.Anyway, although most everyone has been saying you need more RAM (and you do), I think the hard drive was starting to fail. They can do that at any time, though normally they work just fine for years (think light bulbs for a good analogy).</blockquote>