Best way to backup my data?

[Tacos!]

Hi guys,
I got a Macbook Pro on Friday, and Apple just updated their Macbook pro's so I am going to return mine, and get the new updated Macbook pro, and a free ipod. The thing i am asking is, whats the best way to save my music, movies, documents, applications, desktop setting, basically everything? Also how wold i reinstall all of this? I have a mac mini that i am planning to sell, but right now it is my "Target disk drive". So that would be where i store all my backup stuff... . Also, whats the best way to reformat the hard drive... I don't want anyone getting into my data after i format the hard drive and return it to apple.
-Justin

 

[eyebeaz]

I would just do an erase and install after backing up the data. As for transferring the data to another computer I am not exactly sure how to do that I have heard you can do it through an ethernet cable (I am sure someone else knows more about this)? I take it you don't own an external hard drive?

 

[Tacos!]

I would just do an erase and install after backing up the data. As for transferring the data to another computer I am not exactly sure how to do that I have heard you can do it through an ethernet cable (I am sure someone else knows more about this)? I take it you don't own an external hard drive?

I have a firewire cable. should i just copy and paste everything, then paste it all on my new laptop? Or could that remove important stuff like drivers???
-Justin

 

[sushi]

I have a firewire cable. should i just copy and paste everything, then paste it all on my new laptop?

Do not do this if you want to "Clone" your system.

You can use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or SuperDuper to clone your laptop HD to your external HD. Both are free. Personally I prefer ccc but both work well.

If you clone to your Mac Mini, you will loose everything on the Mac Mini.

The big question, is do you clone, or do you copy. If you only want to copy, then you are basically copying the files in your Users folder.

As for erasing your laptops HD after you copy/clone your files, I would would just do a clean install with the DVD(s) provided by Apple. When you first boot up via CD, you can go into Disk Utility. From there you can securely erase your laptop HD. You can do 1 up to 35 passes. So that should be good enough for your needs. After erasing the HD, you can just reinstall the system that came with the laptop by using the DVD(s).

 

[Corrosive vinyl]

what about the migration assistant which every mac has? would that do the trick if he copied his HDD onto an external drive?