Going to do a clean install...

[xTRIGGER092x]

Mountain Lion isn't working very well on my iMac, so I've decided to do a clean reinstall of it. I've got some questions, though:

1. iLife - am I going to lose it? I don't have the App Store versions of iLife as my iMac is a 2010 model. What about iDVD and iWeb (do I need to get those off of my external hard drive after the install)? Can I use my Snow Leopard Applications Install DVD that came with the computer?

2. After the install, how can I get my old data off the external hard drive? You can't use Time Machine without reformatting the external drive, right? Can I just plug it in, go straight into Finder, and copy the files from Backups.backupdb?

 

[rgarjr]

yeah if your computer came with iLife, then u can insert the disc and install it.

After you install the OS, it will ask you if you wanna retrieve your data on your time machine.

 

[xTRIGGER092x]

yeah if your computer came with iLife, then u can insert the disc and install it.

After you install the OS, it will ask you if you wanna retrieve your data on your time machine.

Good. When it asks if you want data from Time Machine, can you pick and choose? I don't want to restore from a backup; I just want to get my iTunes library and some game saves.

 

[blahbrah]

Good. When it asks if you want data from Time Machine, can you pick and choose? I don't want to restore from a backup; I just want to get my iTunes library and some game saves.

This has actually been a constant problem for me restoring from Time Machine on Lion. In Lion you could only restore all of your files or none of it. It still carried over some weird bugs in Lion and made it nearly unusable.

I'd suggest just backing up everything in your music folder and to consolidate your library. If you do that you can literally just drop it in and wait until it's fully transferred. Once you do that, open up iTunes and everything will be exactly the same.