[Xtraz]

I'm not sure where the user-data is stored in the new OS X apps. There doesn't seem to be a preference folder and these applications don't come in folders, just a single icon.

Specifically I'm talking about Mail and Address Book, where I've begun to store a lot of information that I want to back up. Can someone tell me how to back up my mail and addresses onto my external hard drive, such that I can return these apps to their current state if I reformat?

Thanks.

Mail is stored at ~/Library/Mail/

Addresses are stored at ~/Library/Addresses/

Hope this helps.

[Ron Goodman]

And preferences are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/. If you want to back all this up, just save the file under /Users/ with your account name.

[Stefan]

also, if you don't actually need your mails as mails, but just want to be able to read them: highlight the mails you want archived, go to the print menu and then preview them. that gives you one pdf file with all the mails in it.
this speeded up my mail.app a lot since it doesn't index for minutes any more.

i know this is rather off topic, since you wanted your mails backed up, not archived...

[Gee4orce]

Stephan - great tip, especially considering that some of my mail folders are approaching 10,000 messages

If you've got a big second hard drive, that's the best place to backup files to (it fast, cheap, and accessible). To back up, run this as root user: <font face = "courier">tar -cf /Volumes/&lt;MyBigDisk&gt;/Backup /Users </font> (replacing &lt;MyBigDisk&gt; as appropriate). You should also be able to automate this by using the 'crontab' command