Saving some information before reinstalling OSX

T

the jackal

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Hi folks!

I'm new posting here, but an old follower of the forum. Thanks for all the valuable information and support I found here!

Ok, so I'm thinking to delete reinstall the OSX deleting wiping out the HDD and start from scratch. But I don't want to start from scratch in everything. I would like to know if is possible to save some information to put it back where it was after reinstalling the OSX. These are:

1. Keychain. Can I save the keychain information, all the usernames, passwords stored on it, and put it back? How can I do that? Do you recommend doing that or would you suggest to get paper and pencil and write everything down?

2. iTunes: How can I save the information in my actual library? Will it be enough just to do the export playlist thing? Will that also save the album artworks downloaded from iTunes Store?

3. Is there other information you'd save as well that will make my life easier after the reinstall?


And finally, what's the best way to wipe out the HDD and reinstall the OS? Is it just to start with the install disks and it'll do it automatically?

Thanks guys!


The Jackal
 
1. Why do you want to do this?

2. Since you have an Intel MacBook, why not get the Snow Leopard upgrade and let it do its work?

--J.D.
 
Well, unfortunately, some software i use for my work is not compatible yet with snow leopard, so I can't really. In my Industry, software updates are not very frequent, unless there's a new product coming out...
 
It's software for Live Sound Engineering, like digital mixing desks offline and online controllers, Crossover controllers, networking audio software , RTA's... etc
 
I would have thought some of that worked with SL as well, but I am no expert in that :)

Very well, by why the need to re-install that OS? Is it not working?

--J.D.
 
Apparently some of them don't work under SL. Shame!


The laptop runs fine. Basically is been 2 years of learning in the mac environment, and I have installed loads of shite on it, and then "unistall" them, but they'll keep using space in the HD for preferences...

So I wanna start from scratch, but only having what I really need, and doing things properly. Also, I want to start using Time Machine and I don't want to keep all that useless information and data on it.
 
You really should get a disk image of the hard drive before starting over. The easiest way to do this is with an external HD and your install disk. Boot to the install disk and go to utilities/disk utility. Click on your volume in disk utility, then at the top click new image. Then point to save it on the external drive. Also you want to make sure the external is formatted to Mac OS extended (journaled) before starting this process. Then just let it rip and a couple hours later you should have a mountable disk image of the entire HD to work with, where you will have many ways of restoring your saved information using the built in migration engine in OSX.
 
Mmm, that sounds like a good plan.

So, Basically, I do the HD image into my external HD, then reinstall the OS from the disks, and then , from that image just copy what i need to my new installation. Is that right? (sorry, but I'm a bit nerdy in all this and I don't wanna screw it up)

If so, where in the image can I find the keychain information and the itunes library and artworks?

Thanks djackmac
 
the jackal said:
Apparently some of them don't work under SL. Shame!


The laptop runs fine. Basically is been 2 years of learning in the mac environment, and I have installed loads of shite on it, and then "unistall" them, but they'll keep using space in the HD for preferences...

...
Click to expand...
OK. MacOS X leaves behind two kinds of files: .pkg Receipt files and .plist Preferences files. The receipt files are about 4 KB each. One million of these files would consume only 4 GB of your hard drive space. The preferences files are less than 200 KB each. What this all gets down to is that a single floppy diskette can hold every single receipt file left behind of every single third-party software title that you have installed with space left over for a few preferences files. In other words, your leftover files are consuming virtually none of your hard drive space.
 
You can than use utilities/migration assistant to transfer your user (including iphoto, itunes, keychains, mail, bookmarks, user files/folders, settings), applications if you wish, and files outside of on the root directory of the hard drive (if any) over to the new install.
 
Awesome!

Thanks MisterMe for the info; I didn't know that, but still I wanna wipe it out.

And also thanks a lot djackmac. Really valuable advice. It makes perfect sense. Ta!

One last question. My external HDD is 1TB, formatted in HFS+, but I've got around 500GB of data on it. I want to make a partition of around 300GB for Time Machine. I've seen in disk utility that you can make a partition of a drive with this conditions, but I'm not sure if that is safe having data on it, and I don't have enough space in my other HDs to back up all that amount of information.

Have you ever tried to make the partition with data in the disk? I know there's a risk anyway, and I'll try to back up as much as I can, but, I need to be sure before doing it...
 
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