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Kdog01 · Jul 5, 2006, 11:07 AM

I have been running 10.3.9 on my 1.5 Powerbook since I purchased it in 2004, but now need to upgrade to Tiger. I want to do the clean install for the obvious benefits that everyone seems to be aware of, but I do not have a backup utility. I do have a 160GB external hardrive, however. All I care about saving is my Itunes music and my iphoto pictures, is there any way that I can do a quick backup to my external drive?

TETENAL · Jul 5, 2006, 11:31 AM

With an Archive & Install you get practically the same benefits of a clean install without the hassle.
If you do a clean install and all you care about are the iTunes and iPhoto libraries then all you have to do is copy them onto your external drive and after you installed the OS and created the new user you simply copy them back into their respective folders (Music, Pictures) before you launch iTunes and iPhoto the first time.

Kdog01 · Jul 5, 2006, 11:35 AM

So if I do an archive and install, I wouldn't have to backup my itunes and iphoto, correct?

TETENAL · Jul 5, 2006, 11:45 AM

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120

If you do an Archive & Install it keeps your user folder(s) and third-party applications intact, but you get a completely fresh operating system (the old one is archived and can be deleted later if you don't need to recover anything, like a third-party driver or so, out of it).