partial restore?
 

My MBP hard drive died last week and I just got my computer back from Apple after they replaced the drive. I have a backup of my drive from 10 days before the crash but I suspect that some of the data on the backup was already corrupted. Plus, I migrated from a MacBook to my MBP and there are things on there that I probably should have cleaned up a long time ago. I was thinking this would be a perfect time for me to do that. Can I just restore certain applications, my photos, itunes, e-mails, documents and other user settings?

Applications that required installers won't likely copy over like that, but the rest should in general. Email can be trouble, though -- all the files are there, but that doesn't mean Mail will want it restore piecemeal.

In general, I'd really suggest -- on first startup of the new drive -- migrating from the backup and removing what you don't want, rather than selectively restoring. (Don't migrate AFTER the first startup -- do it when it prompts you to 'copy from another Mac'.)