Clean install of Mountain Lion, restore data manually?

[richard13]

I did a clean install of ML using the flash drive method. This went well but now I'm kinda stuck. The reason I wanted to do a clean install is to get rid of any cruft from my Lion installation. Now I need to restore my data and I've been using Time Machine for backup.

It seems to me that using Migration Assistant isn't ideal as it's not granular enough to not bring back some of the cruft. For instance, it wants to bring back my old user account. It also sees my Applications as one monolithic chunk.

Is there any way to do a manual restore of my data so I can get just what I want?

 

[Macman45]

Yes, step by step here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

You can be selective about what you put back...I have done so a couple of times. `It helps cut out junk you don't need (I am a compulsive data hoarder!)

 

[richard13]

Yes, step by step here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

You can be selective about what you put back...I have done so a couple of times. `It helps cut out junk you don't need (I am a compulsive data hoarder!)

Thank you for your kind reply. The information in the link you provided gave me an idea. I went to Time Machine in System Preferences and set up Time Machine for my new installation of ML. This was a bit of a leap of faith as I thought doing so would wipe out my backups. Luckily it didn't and I was able to start manually restoring my data from within Time Machine. Somehow I don't remember this working out last time I tried it on a clean install.

Anyway, that problem seems solved.