Restoring 'File History' to new installation.

Hello all.

After all the articles about Windows 8's "new approach" to backup through File History, I did not realize that the old backup software still existed. As such, I backed up my files through File History and did a clean re-install, but now I cannot restore them except through manually copying the files (which in many cases is problematic because of the time stamp appended to the file names).

Is there some way I could restore the files from the File History of my old install to my clean install of Windows 8 Pro?

Thank you very much!

I would also like to know this. If my hard drive fails, but I have a File History archive of my important files on an external drive, can I just reconnect that drive to a fresh installation of Windows 8 and restore all my files? And if so, how?

Because if you can't do this, then it's virtually useless as a method of backup.