Time machine questions

[mattnham]

Hey people,

Earlier this week my macbook's hard drive bit the dust. So I took it into my friendly apple reseller got it fixed under warranty and it was all sweet. So, when I got home I started up my mac and it had the whole leopard intro. I followed all the prompts and set up a new account.

Now, I quite like having my mac 'clean' like it is at the moment because it was a fresh install. However I have a time machine backup from my mac prior to the incident. On my old account the shortname was my full name (I didn't know what I was doing when I set it up) so this time I set my shortname to Matt.

Now the questions, Say I only want to restore specific folders e.g. my music folder and specific applications. Can I do that by simply plugging in my time machine hard drive and hitting restore while in 'time machine' mode?. (Will time machine show all the stuff even though it has a different short name as it recorded the data onto?) and will it conflict in the install and try create a new account with my old shortname?

Thanks for your help, please tell me if you find my questions a little confusing :S

Cheers,
Matttttt.

 

[MurphyM]

I would try restoring an inconsequential folder first, and see where Time Machine places it, before you start messing with stuff like your entire music library.

Your question is clear, and a good one!

I had a rebuilt machine that I wanted to continue using the old Time Machine drive with, without losing all the backups, but I couldn't find an easy way to do that.

 

[mattnham]

I would try restoring an inconsequential folder first, and see where Time Machine places it, before you start messing with stuff like your entire music library.

Your question is clear, and a good one!

I had a rebuilt machine that I wanted to continue using the old Time Machine drive with, without losing all the backups, but I couldn't find an easy way to do that.

Thanks for your reply, I am going to try that I think, but I'm thinking it just won't show the time machine files :S Maybe the migration assistant?

Matttttttt