About a month ago I did a re-install of Mac OS X Leopard on my MacBook Pro. It took a while to get everything installed again, and I really learned a lot in the process. Knowledge which will be absolutely invaluable when I’ll be doing another re-install of the operating system. Apart from re-installing, I also used the opportunity to really clean up my messy disk: documents, photos, videos and what not. Thank God I have an external Lacie. It’s a miracle that there’s still free disc space on that thing, with all the huge projects popping up these days.
Well, here’s a useful check-list of things you might want to remember to back-up before formatting / re-installing your OS:
- iCal
- Mails (all mailboxes)
- Address Book
- Custom settings for various apps (workspaces etc.)
- Custom brushes, patterns etc.
- Color Profiles
- BluePhone Elite SMS archive
- Notes and stickies / post-its (Dashboard)
- Adium contacts
- Bookmarks
- (anything else?)
It would be kind of neat to hook up my Mac with Time Machine using some cheap WD external disc. having that extra back-up would really help me sleep better at night I think. I’m probably the person in the world who has the least trust in data. Maybe it’s just me, but a bunch of ones and zeros is just so untangable and ghostly, which makes it pretty difficult to believe that it wont just disappear one day *poof*.