[psteen]

can anyone tell me how i would go about first backing up my entire hard drive (i can transfer all the data onto an external hard drive). the computer has three users and i wish to copy everything for all of accounts onto the hard drive. after that i would like to reformat my hd and reinstall Tiger in addition to all of my old files and settings. any help would be great. thanks

pete

[pat++]

You can use the Archive&Install option when Installing Tiger. It will basically erase the old OS and keep your accounts/settings. No need to backup on a different drive.

If you really want to do a clean install, copy the home directories on your external harddrive (go in /Users and drag&drop home directories on the external harddisk). Then use the Erase&Install option when installing tiger and create the users. Once this is done, you can copy the files back from the external harddrive.