Clean install advice

toweltowel
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I finally took the plunge and picked up an academic copy of Panther for my iBook. I've decided to go all the way and do a reformat + clean install. I haven't reformatted the disk since I first got the iBook almost two years ago, and it's been through several major repairs since, so I figure it's about time. That, and I'm fed up with the partition scheme I put in place when I first bought it. My lesson was, as long as you don't need to run Classic, partitions are baaad, and they will be mercilessly expunged with this reformat.



My question is, how do I make reconstiuting my system as painless as possible? I will obviously do a complete drive image and backup before I start (got a nice 120GB FW drive for that). And I'm actually looking forward to cleaning out all the BSD/X11 tools I've installed, and re-installing updated versions of only what I actually use.



But I'd rather not have to re-install all my regular apps by hand, not to mention the settings and preferences within them. Can I just copy over my /Applications and /Library folders to the new system (along with my home directory, of course)? I've tried to be good in that almost all of my non-Apple apps are in ~/Applications, not /Applications. But even so, does, say, MS Office put stuff in /Library even if it's installed in the home directory? Or in any other places? Should I be careful only to copy over those bits of /Library that I need? Is there a simple way to tell what's what? For that matter, is there anything in ~/Library which Panther would have updated, that I should be careful to not copy?



Thanks for any advice!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    mattjohndrowmattjohndrow Posts: 1,618member
    i'd just copy all your documents, music, pictures, and whatnot back into your user folder, then go into your lbrary, add fonts you want, CMMs, etc...then reinstall your apps.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
    Well, I figured out that most apps stand nicely on their own. All I had to copy from ~/Library were my mailboxes and web browser bookmarks. Didn't have to reinstall anything - jopied the Office applications from my backup, and they worked just fine. The whole thing was remarkably painless.



    And Panther is nice. Looks nice, runs nice. Really does feel snappier.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    mattjohndrowmattjohndrow Posts: 1,618member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Towel

    Panther is nice. Looks nice, runs nice. Really does feel snappier.



    werd!
  • Reply 4 of 4
    formerlurkerformerlurker Posts: 2,686member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Towel

    Well, I figured out that most apps stand nicely on their own. All I had to copy from ~/Library were my mailboxes and web browser bookmarks. And Panther is nice. Looks nice, runs nice. Really does feel snappier.



    If you're looking for your Address Book data, it's in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook
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