Backups/Time Machine/Restoring

Hi,

I am going for a full reformat and fresh install of OSX 10.6 for my MacBook black (2.4gig, 2gig ram).

I am currently making a 'time machine' backup of everything, but I actually only want to keep a few things:
Photos, Movies, Music
Emails (and the settings/folder structures in Entourage)
Documents

I was wondering - from the Time Machine, can I drag and drop things back across I want to keep or only do a full restore?

If not I need to drag and drop to save what I want, in which case I know where most things are I want to keep except: Where are the emails/settings stored, so I can copy them back once a fresh install is done?

Finally, I have about 60-80 films saved on my HDD, but when I drag them across (I did this with an old ext HD) it said there are 900 files copying! Any ideas why?

Thanks for any help

I don't know if this answers your question fully. But if you are currently planning a Time Machine (TM) back up, there is a simple way to exclude those items which you do not require.

Click on the TM clock icon on the Menu Bar and from the drop down, select "Open TM preferences". Click on "Options". This opens a small rectangular window on the top of which it says "Exclude these items from backup". By using the "+" sign you can enter into the box anything you don't want backed up.

When you restore from backup, these will be excluded. In practice, it's easier to exclude things from a total backup than select things you do want backed up. In other words, TM backs up everything as standard — you then deduct things you don't want.

Hope that helps.

Ian

Cheers Ian. I actually ran a full TM backup and it looks like a mirror of my hard drive so I should be able to just drag back the things I want. If not I'll do a full system restore and try again. The only thing is that I want to erase the whole thing (10.5) and start from scratch with 10.6 so I'll have to see how it all goes. Only 8 hours remaining of the 7 pass erase...... Haha