Recover from time machine can't find internal HD, stays at 'searching for disks'

Your hard drive may be damaged beyond repair - you'll need to boot into your Recovery partition and use Disk Utility to Verify and, if needed, Repair the drive. If it can't be repaired then you need a new drive.

Call back and let us know the results. It's a darned good thing that you have a current backup.

Clinton

That's really bad. You should be able to open Disk Utility and see a partition named, usually, "Macintosh HD" (unless you've changed the name of your main boot drive). If you're not seeing it, then your drive is already dead and you're in need of a new one.

Try using your Recovery partition (holding down the command and R keys whilst booting) just one more time. You should see a screen like this:

...and you should be able to see Disk Utility there and open it up and see the "Macintosh HD" partition to the left of the screen. Click on it, Verify it (if you can) and Repair it if you're told to.

Call back if nothing works.

Clinton

That's the way that hard drives die - it's either long and drawn out with multiple cases of the spinning beach ball of death or just in one whack.

You'll be needing a new drive - I don't know if you would be wanting a SSD (if so, see my long-overdue for a re-write user tip - Upgrading Your MacBook Pro with a Solid State Drive) or evaluate your needs and go shopping for a hard drive or an SSHD at OWC.

There are also videos on OWC that walk you through the installation of a SSD/HD. Pretty good prices there, too, although you can sometimes find a better deal on what OWC has at Amazon.

Good luck,

Clinton