How to restore iMac with Time Machine?
If the drive is completely empty &amp; doesn't even have a recovery partition, then the Mac will automatically go to Internet Recovery if you hold  Cmd ⌘   R  at boot.

To prevent this, hold the  Opt ⌥  key at the chimes &amp; choose your Time Machine volume to boot from. You should then find the option to Restore from Time Machine Backup.