Backing up my macbook pro?

[Mattbull]

I have been having quite a bit of trouble with my macbook pro and am sure I want to do a clean format and reinstall mac osx. I have about 400-450g on my 500g hd i would like to keep. I heard "time machine" is a good way to do this, but in order for this to work with my external HD, I have to have it formatted. That is not an option. Is there a way I can just drag all my files over to my external HD? is this the best way? thanks

 

[Hellhammer]

What format does the drive currently use? You can just drag&drop the files if you want. That's what I would recommend because with Time Machine, you often transfer all the crap back to the machine. If you drag&drop only the files you NEED, then you avoid transferring crap.

 

[spinnerlys]

You can drag your files to the external HDD, but know this:

FAT32

• Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
• No individual file larger than 4GB.

NTFS

• Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
• Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write NTFS from Leopard: Install MacFUSEand NTFS-3G. You can install both with NTFS-3Gfor Mac OS X.
• To Read/Write NTFS from Snow Leopard: Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard
• (Be aware that some are of the opinion that enabling native NTFS in SL is unstable/unreliable, and favor the MacFuse/NTFS-3G method for Snow Leopard)

HFS

• Read/Write HFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write HFS from Windows, Install MacDrive
• To Read HFS (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer

You can check via Get Info in Finder or Disk Utility to see what format your external HDD uses.

 

[Mattbull]

I am currently using mac OS extended (journaled). I am not quite sure what the fat32/ntfs/hfs is. Can I just do alt-command-spacebar to get all my files then just select/deselect the files that I want to transfer/don't want to transfer? Will this give me all my files?

 

[spinnerlys]

I am currently using mac OS extended (journaled). I am not quite sure what the fat32/ntfs/hfs is. Can I just do alt-command-spacebar to get all my files then just select/deselect the files that I want to transfer/don't want to transfer? Will this give me all my files?

If the external HDD is in the Mac OS Extended (HFS+) format, you can use Time Machine without reformatting the external HDD.

Anyway, selecting the files and folders and dragging them onto the external HDD will work, though I don't know what Option/Alt + Command + Spacebar does to your files, as it open the SEARCH THIS MAC window on my Mac OS X 10.6.4 Mac.
Just open two different Finder Windows, one showing the external HDD, the other showing the internal HDD and drag the files and folders to the external HDD.
You can also take a look at CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone folders onto the external HDD if you don't want to use Finder and its DRAG & DROP capability.

Btw, what exactly do you want to save? Your settings, mail, bookmarks, videos, ...? Are all your files in the Home folder? If so, cloning your Home folder will suffice. You can use CarbonCopyCloner for that.

 

[Mattbull]

I have about a million PDF books, chm books, over 2 gigs of musics, a ton of itunesU lectures, firefox bookmarks and some text documents and some pictures. I also have windows 7 that I don't really have anything important on (except winrar files that i haven't open) but the only way I can write to my external HD is through windows 7, so I am going to have to select everything there. I do have everything in my home folder. Once I have everything arranged in my home folder the way I want it (it is a HUGE mess right now), I will transfer it over like you recommended. I would like to do a clean format just to know everything is fresh. What are the advantages to CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper over finder?

If the external HDD is in the Mac OS Extended (HFS+) format, you can use Time Machine without reformatting the external HDD.

Anyway, selecting the files and folders and dragging them onto the external HDD will work, though I don't know what Option/Alt + Command + Spacebar does to your files, as it open the SEARCH THIS MAC window on my Mac OS X 10.6.4 Mac.
Just open two different Finder Windows, one showing the external HDD, the other showing the internal HDD and drag the files and folders to the external HDD.
You can also take a look at CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone folders onto the external HDD if you don't want to use Finder and its DRAG & DROP capability.

Btw, what exactly do you want to save? Your settings, mail, bookmarks, videos, ...? Are all your files in the Home folder? If so, cloning your Home folder will suffice. You can use CarbonCopyCloner for that.