Reinstalling OS X Lion vs restoring from Time Machine backup If the system doesn't boot up (it was due to this issue), is it better to reinstall OS X Lion, or restore from a Time Machine backup?

I do see a Time Machine backup from 3 AM last night, so if that is used to restore the machine, will it read all 600 GB from the external backup drive and copy it to the iMac's hard drive, or will it just do the selective restore, kind of like Windows 7's setting a restore point, and any rollback should be partial - i.e., it only needs to restore a few files to make the system work fine again, but is it the same as on OS X Lion's Time Machine restore?

Is restoring a better approach than reinstalling OS X?
A Time Machine restore will restore to the last point in time in the backup. A fresh install of Lion will bring your machine to new status.

However, if you do a fresh install and tell it to use the Time Machine backup to restore your data, it will also bring it back to the same point in time.

Some people [citation needed] prefer to use this opportunity to do a fresh install and then selectively drag the data they want from Time Machine back again.

However, keep in mind that if you set up a new backup, it could overwrite the old one.