Advice needed: New HDD, restore from TM or not?

[VideoBeagle]

I'll be picking up my iMac from the Apple Store tomorrow. The HDD part of it's "fusion" drive was coming up damaged, so they replaced it.

I have Time Machine backups, BUT, they're from the day or two before I took the computer in (the errors is what got me to start using Time Machine).

So, my question is... should I restore from the Time Machine backups? Is it possible there is corrupt files in it from the failing drive? When I tried to copy some data files manually to back up additionaly, I got "couldn't copy the file because of errors" messages...would Time Machine get those and not report them?

 

[Ebenezum]

It depends on the condition of the files in the Time Machine backup. If the system files have been corrupted its likely the Time Machine restore won't work properly.

You could try Time Machine restore and see if it works. Keep in mind it will likely take a very long time.

If I were in your shoes I would clean install OS X, then install software from Mac App Store or from developers website. Finally copy all user data files from backup. You should see quickly if any files were corrupted and replace them with good copies. If that isn't possible you might have to recreate the files.

Lastly you might want to use another backup method to another drive in addition to Time Machine, one good option is clone made with software such as Disk Utility (included in 10.11 but extremely badly designed) or commercial software such as SuperDuper / Carbon Copy Cloner. If Time Machine drive fails you would still have the clone backup...