Lion upgrade questions

Hi everyone! Got my iMac bout 6 months ago and thus far I am more than pleased with it! My OS X experience is limited but growing... Anyway my question is - I have lots of photos, videos of the bairns and other general media etc on the iMac and I am using Time Machine to back it all up. When Lion is released I would like to upgrade but do a fresh install, erasing the HDD. Basically how do I go about erasing my HDD, installing Lion, and then restoring from Time Machine so my iMac is as it was, but with Lion as the OS!

Thanks in advance for your help!!

Right now since Lion is still not released, we no nothing about how it will install. Some are saying most will download it from the App store.

Wait till Lion is released this summer and someone gets to try it then ask your question again as at this point, no one really knows especially about installing it. It maybe very different from OSX over the last few years.

You would boot the machine with the Lion DVD, use Disk Utility to erase and prepare the drive by formatting it. Then proceed to install Lion. During the install, you'll be asked if you wish to restore from backup. Make sure the external drive with the TM backup is attached and respond yes. The TM backup will recover your data.

However, there's really no reason to do a fresh install as Lion will likely be able to upgrade right over the top of Snow Leopard. We don't know that yet. We'll have to wait until Lion is released to find out.