Sorry this is just an answer rather than a good solution but...
You can migrate data somewhat piecemeal...but the granularity only extends down to the top level directories in the user's home directory, Documents, Music, Pictures, etc..so you could restore "Documents" and nothing else, and move it to the external disk. You could repeat this tedious process until you had it all back and where you want it. Ideally, your data is distributed evenly between these directories and or multiple user accounts, but in practice it rarely is. Most of the GB tend to lurk in Music or such
ICBW but I think you can only restore to the current system disk. Of course, you could plug in a blank external disk and do a fresh install of the OS onto that, and rename the external disk to the volume name that would be in the backup. This is usually Macintosh HD if you never changed it. The internal disk can be renamed without consequence to something else. Then you could run the migration assistant and restore everything in one gulp.
I'm sure there is probably a better way of doing it, as the above is a bit of a faff, but it should at least get you back a working copy of Mac and your data.
Hi Dunk, I have an issue that the old iMac doesn't have enough room on the HDD (its quite old) for a full migration of data from the external HDD back up. Can I migrate the Time Machine data onto another external HD and then access from the iMac? (I don't think my imac is upgradable it's too old) i.e plu another empty HD into the old imac, then plug the back up disck in as well and transfer directly onto the new empty Hd?
