Creating a backup of applications?

[RenDog]

I have a 3 year old MacBook running OSX.4. The hard drive is failing so i've purchased a new drive to replace it. I've never installed a new drive before however i can see that it is very easy to replace.

My question is, how do i create a backup of my current applications? I'd rather not download all of the updates after i reinstall the OS. I have an external drive as well so i don't need to make a backup CD.

Is it as simple as copy the app's folder and paste it into my external, then the reverse after i reinstall the OS?

Thank you

 

[ekidd]

Use your external drive and make a backup using time machine. After you install and format the new hard drive, restore using your time machine backup. Easy as cake :]

 

[Bernard SG]

To complement ekidd's post; you will use Migration Assistant to restore your Time Machine Backup.

You can also use Carbone Copy Cloner which is even more straight forward, IMO.

 

[RenDog]

Thanks so much for the reply. Unfortunately i don't have Time Machine. My external is not an apple product. Is there a way around this or another way?

Thanks again!

 

[Intell]

Your external drive doesn't have to be an Apple drive. It just needs to be formatted for Mac OS X.

 

[RenDog]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

But I still don't have time machine. Does my current os contain an app for creating a restore file that I can save on my external?
Thanks again.

 

[Bernard SG]

It's very strange that you don't have Time Machine on a 3 years old MB. It's normally in the default installation of OS X.