[jyl]

Hey, a question for the Mac guys.

1. If I buy a new iMac, can I restore all my user data (iTunes/iPhoto libraries, documents, etc) over from a Time Machine backup of my old G5 iMac? Even though the old iMac was G5/Leopard and the new is Intel/SnowLeopard? So that I have new machine w/ new O/S and new apps, but all the original data.

2. The old iMac was set up with multiple users, each with their own libraries. How will I handle that? Will I have trouble restoring data if the new iMac is not set up exactly the same way?

3. Will I be able to restore a selected app as well (Office X)? I have long since lost the CD, in 3 house moves. If I have to buy Office again, its not a big deal I guess.

I think I can do this using Migration Assistant - but wanted to be sure. Would it be feasible/better to manually import the libraries and files from the Time Machine backup (not sure I can do that).

My G5 iMac appears to be dying after 6+ faithful years. Got sluggish, frequent freezing. Finally wouldn't boot up. Apple store guys booted it from an external drive, and suggested I do an archive/reinstall from my Leopard DVD. Which I did, after successfully verifying the hard drive using Disk Utility on the DVD. Then the iMac would boot but got kernel panic within minutes. I tried another archive/reinstall and got a message saying Installer failed. I tried again and this time Installer wouldn't give me the option of archive/reinstall, but said my only option was to erase/install. I've booted from the Leopard DVD and tried verifying the hard drive, message is "Filesystem verify or repair failed". The machine won't boot from the hard drive any more.

So,

4. Should I simply replace the hard drive and try installing Leopard on the old iMac and restoring the old iMac from Time Machine? I kind of want to buy a new machine, but would like to get the old iMac working as a spare machine.