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Clean install of Lion. Done. Now I want to restore parts from Time Machine. How?

A

acribb

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 30, 2007
148
3
As the title says, I have just finished a clean install of Lion. Now I want to restore only certain parts from Time Machine. How?

I'm afraid that if I plug in my Time Machine hard drive, that the fresh install of OSX will erase my current backup.
 
I would use the Migration Assistant (in /Applications/Utilites) to import whatever data/settings you want from the old Time Machine backup.

If you turn off Time Machine on the new Lion install it will not do anything to the Time Machine backup set you have.
 
Weaselboy said:
I would use the Migration Assistant (in /Applications/Utilites) to import whatever data/settings you want from the old Time Machine backup.

If you turn off Time Machine on the new Lion install it will not do anything to the Time Machine backup set you have.
Click to expand...

Interesting idea, didn't know you could use Migration Assistant from a Time machine disk, thanks!
 
linuxcooldude said:
Interesting idea, didn't know you could use Migration Assistant from a Time machine disk, thanks!
Click to expand...

Yep... that will be one of the choices it give you when you start the app. I have used it several times when moving to new machines and it works surprisingly well.
 
Assuming you had a reason for erasing your drive you don't want to do a restore. Nor would you want TM to back up your "new" machine over your old one.

So migration is the way to go. You may end up with some stuff you don't want, but it's relatively easy to delete that when it's finished. And actually using setup assistant when your new system starts up is the best way to go; if you already set up a "new" user with the same name as the user you had before it will create problems. Best to run the assistant before any users are set up for the best results.
 
I think Time Machine defaults to off with a new install so it should not start automatically backing up.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

I ended up erasing and formatting my built-in HDD in my Macbook Pro and then installed a fresh clean copy of OSX Lion from a USB stick. After the OS installed, it asked me if I wanted to bring any data in and gave me the choice of the Time Machine backup which I chose and then plugged in my HDD. 3 hours later and I was back up and running again, just had to do a few updates.

Everything runs much faster now.

It seems like I need to do this every year or two. I guess it's the defragmentation of the HDD that does this, that's all I can figure.

Side note, is it better to run Final Cut Pro X on an external HDD? I only have a 5400 RPM HDD that came stock with my MBP, and I have an external 5400 RPM HDD as well. 4GB of RAM. No money to upgrade RAM or HDD right now, so I am trying to do with what I have for now.
 
Defragmentation is usually not a problem on Mac OSX as much as say Windows. In fact My 2009 Mac Pro has same install with two upgrades with no problems. Yours could be a different issue. If you have large video files on harddrive or is 90% full then you might need too. in the case of large amount of videos I would but it on a second hard drive then system drive.

Edit: Oh, didn't initially see you have FCP X
 
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