[jyl]

I've failed in four attempts to restore the system using the automatic process - Restore system from Time Machine or Migration Assistant. Very disappointing as Restore has always worked for me before - that's how I've replaced the drives on my iMac and MacBook the last three times.

Have re-formatted the iMac's drive, Verified it using Disk utility, reinstalled Mac OS X and run Software Update, Verified the external drive (where the Time Machine backup lives). No joy. The process keeps hanging up. Read all sorts of threads on the support groups and tried all those suggestions - doing the Restore or Migration before Setup, after Setup, etc etc.

So I have to do it the manual way, as you guys suggested all along. I formatted and reinstalled OS X on the iMac's drive (for the 4th time), ran Software Update, set up our family's four user accounts. Time Machine sees the old backups and I am restoring the data files and applications, one by one. It is working so far (I got 160GB of photos back and iPhoto sees them fine).

I see how much junk had accumulated in the 6+ years of this iMac's existence, and guess it will be nice to get a nice clean system. But, boy, is this a slow process.

Thanks for telling me where the info/data is located. That's what I need.

Will report back.