Time Machine backup / Restore question

Noob Alert!

All of the Time Machine backups tht I have were from 10.7.1. This week, I took my wife's iMac in for the Seagate 1TB drive replacement program. They said that the new HDD has 10.6.8 on it.

My question is, can I restore files from my Time Machine backups to 10.6.8 or do I need to upgrade it to 10.7.1 first and then restore from the TM backups?

Thanks.

 

Thanks for the reply, MrCheeto...

I cannot speak to the state of the machine since I just picked it up from the Apple store but had to come back to work for a few more hours.

They did tell me that 'we only put the OS Version on the NEW HDD that the machine shipped with.'

I am assuming here, but I dont think they did any sort of investigation on the old drive for user accounts , etc.

To be honest, I am not sure I recall the User name but I can get the machine name from the TM backups.

Do I just need to point the new machine (after loading Lion on it again (yes, purchased once from the store)) at the TM backup drive and click RESTORE on the lower right side or is there some sort of migration assistant app/utility I should be using?

Its my first mac and, while I love it so far, this HDD thing and the process involved with it has been a little off-putting... especially if I cant get the TM backups to work properly.

Thanks again for the reply...

 

Indeed it was simple... I did all the required software updates, upgraded to Lion, did some more updates and then ran Migration Assistant.

Answered some questions and it restored everything to the exact same state it was prior to the HDD swap.

The only was the account i created in order to login the first time was the same name as the account I was trying to bring over. So I had to do some user name changes and then log in as the migrated ID.

It went perfectly.

Thanks for the info, MrCheeto...