I spent the last 2 hours reading around this forum and other sites and am getting quite confused, so will post all my questions to one place. Hopefully this will also help other users!
I have been running with essentially the same OS X install since 2008. Going through 3 Macs and from 10.5 to 10.8 (my current install). I took me one year to decide going to 10.9 and while thinking of that disaster struck, I had a HW failure on my Synology and my time machine backup going back for years is lost. So I spent the last weeks rebuilding my NAS (this time my own HW...) and looking at my Mac and its content. I know that the Mac purists claim that you do not need clean install, but I decided actually to do one. I want to dump a lot of apps I don't need. User folders I don't need and essentially start from a fresh machine to which I will only restore the data and apps I need.
So what I want to do is:
1. Back up my data. I plan to do two backups.
- One which will only cover the data I will likely need: docs, downloads, iphoto library, itunes library, apple mail content. for this I think I would like to use CCC but not sure yet and will store this data on my NAS.
- A second complete backup in case something goes wrong using time machine into a second dedicated hard disk.
2. Clean install. I thought I will restore Mountain lion after erasing my drive. And then upgrade the OS, install the apps I want (I have all app sources, serials etc. stored in one location) and restore my data.
My questions:
1. Is y backup strategy correct? What do I need to backup to make sure I can restore:
- itunes library
- iphoto library
- apple mail
- download and documents
Is it enough to simply copy my home folder? Is CCC the best option? do I also use it for the complete backup (make a clone) or keep time machine?
2. for the restore. I think the best would be to restore 10.8 and then upgrade? I guess I should restore my data before the upgrade?
3. anything else I should think of?
Many thanks for all advice you can give me
I have been running with essentially the same OS X install since 2008. Going through 3 Macs and from 10.5 to 10.8 (my current install). I took me one year to decide going to 10.9 and while thinking of that disaster struck, I had a HW failure on my Synology and my time machine backup going back for years is lost. So I spent the last weeks rebuilding my NAS (this time my own HW...) and looking at my Mac and its content. I know that the Mac purists claim that you do not need clean install, but I decided actually to do one. I want to dump a lot of apps I don't need. User folders I don't need and essentially start from a fresh machine to which I will only restore the data and apps I need.
So what I want to do is:
1. Back up my data. I plan to do two backups.
- One which will only cover the data I will likely need: docs, downloads, iphoto library, itunes library, apple mail content. for this I think I would like to use CCC but not sure yet and will store this data on my NAS.
- A second complete backup in case something goes wrong using time machine into a second dedicated hard disk.
2. Clean install. I thought I will restore Mountain lion after erasing my drive. And then upgrade the OS, install the apps I want (I have all app sources, serials etc. stored in one location) and restore my data.
My questions:
1. Is y backup strategy correct? What do I need to backup to make sure I can restore:
- itunes library
- iphoto library
- apple mail
- download and documents
Is it enough to simply copy my home folder? Is CCC the best option? do I also use it for the complete backup (make a clone) or keep time machine?
2. for the restore. I think the best would be to restore 10.8 and then upgrade? I guess I should restore my data before the upgrade?
3. anything else I should think of?
Many thanks for all advice you can give me