Upgrading to Panther

[Zaid]

Now that Panther is hopefully nearing release, it may be a good time for you experienced macheads to impart some of your wisdom to the rest of us who have not yet gone through an OS X upgrade.

What is the best option, clean install, or upgrade?
Does a clean install require the hd to be reformatted ?
Is there a way to back up prefs and then restore them onto a new install?

And any other tips and tricks anyone would like to share

[ZildjianKX]

Does a clean install require the hd to be reformatted ?

In short... yes. :)

[MacsRgr8]

Originally posted by Zaid

Is there a way to back up prefs and then restore them onto a new install?


You can use "Backup.app", or even iSync to backup bookmarks and contacts....
Usually the best thing to do, is to backup you Home directory. Everything inside you Home-dir is what your user environment is all about. So all your documents, prefs, bookmarks, pictures, movies, desktop.. and so on.
I recommend people to backup their whole Home directory to another volume (or CD, DVD), then wipe the HD and install the new OS, and apps
Once finished you can ofcourse restore the contents of the Home.

[Dale Sorel]

Originally posted by MacsRgr8
I recommend people to backup their whole Home directory to another volume (or CD, DVD)...

Or DV camera, if you have one :)