Using Time Machine for the first time

[swindmiller]

My wife has an i5 Macbook Pro running Lion that has been running slow for the past few weeks, the "thinking" circle keeps spinning for a while between each operation.
I thought I would wipe the drive and start over and get her up to Mavericks at the same time. I am a PC tech but am still learning MAC. I have wiped and restored 2 other macbooks using a memory key I made for Mavericks and they went fine but no data was needed to be backed up.
Anyone who is married should understand why I am treading so lightly on the wifes laptop and don't want to loose any data.
I had a WD 1tb external drive that I formatted to Mac OS Extended, Journaled and selected it to be the Time Machine backup drive. I let it run (about 5 hours) and it's finished now.

So can I install Mavericks on a freshly formatted drive and use this to restore her data?

What would I be missing? I assume I will have to re-install any programs she added but will all of the data from those programs be on the backup?

I am mainly worried about her docs, mail, calendar, bookmarks and some fonts she installed for some graphics program I will reinstall.

Sorry for all of the questions but I am still learning.
Scott

 

[Weaselboy]

Just install Mavericks then at the end you will be asked if you want to import data from another computer. You can then point the import to the TM backup and it will import all her apps and data.

Thing is, this is not truly a "clean install" and if there is a utility or something causing a conflict on her Mac, that will very likely be imported and the problem may persist.

A true clean install involved manually copying every setting and document back over and manually reinstalling each app.

 

[swindmiller]

Ok, thanks. I may try to upgrade her directly to mavericks first then try some of the things mentioned here:
http://bjokib.com/slow-mac-performance-this-article-solves-it/
and here:
[URL="http://bjokib.com/do-some-mac-troubleshooting-yourself/"]http://bjokib.com/do-some-mac-troubleshooting-yourself/[/URL]

If that fails I may do a wipe and install Mavericks without restoring and manually copy her data back over. I can access that directly from the Time Machine backup, right?

Thanks,
Scott

 

[Weaselboy]

If that fails I may do a wipe and install Mavericks without restoring and manually copy her data back over. I can access that directly from the Time Machine backup, right?

Thanks,
Scott

Yes, you can.

 

[swindmiller]

Yes, you can.

Thanks