pull the plug half way through ???

Seriously, depends what you used to make the backup as to your options
when restoring. Also what you want to 'cherry pick' out of the backup.

I used Back In Time to get what I could and then reinstalled 10.04.
I couldnt even click on the screen because it was flashing so much.
I dont want to restore all my files. Just some of them. Im getting
a new hd but I have to wait another two weeks for it to arrive. So
Im just going to restore what I need to work.

First thing to do is install Back-in-Time then start a restore and see
what options you have regarding selection of folders/files. It would
expect it be flexible enough to cherry pick items, but if not you may
need to restore to a temporary folder and cherry pick from there then
delete the folder.

I dont see any restore features is the problem.
Ill just end up doing it by hand.

If you want to stay out of the command line, you still have the manual
option of holding down Ctrl while you click to select multiple things at
once (including entire folders) then doing copy and paste. It's a lot
better than one at a time! Back in time is the front end for rsync (from
what I recall being told), so it *should/may* have the possibly of excluding
or only including certain file types and files or directories that match a
pattern. Should also be possible to turn of the recursive so it only
restores data in the top level directory that you are in.

Command line option is similar to

rsync -r --include 'wildcarded pattern' --exclude 'wildcarded patern'
/backup/directory/path /new/directory/path

Would need to verify that though...

Im checking my backups and apparently - I lost a lot!
I looking at the config file that Back In Time made and it says;

(for example)
profile1.snapshots.include.10.value=/home/wadesmart/.fonts

but, its not to be found on the hd. Years of locating fonts
is now gone.

Backing up and making second and third backups while
explicitly checking each one is what I guess has to be
done.