Fresh Install: Best method to transfer data?

[jonofuf]

Hi everyone. I know there are tons of people out there who have done an OS upgrade and run into permission nightmares. I sincerely think a "Best Practices" guide should be made to outline how best to restore personal files after a fresh install of OS X.

I have been fighting with permissions errors for months. By that I mean the trackpad settings wouldn't stick, iPhoto kept prompting me if I want it to auto-open when connecting a camera, I couldn't rotate photos in Preview because I didn't have sufficient privileges to the files. I tried to fix these problems via "Repair Disk Permissions," an ACL Fix/Repair tool (both Lion's recovery mode, and 3rd party apps), manually editing permissions in Finder, and a myriad of Terminal 'chmod' suggestions. It seemed like each attempt would fix one or two problems, while others persisted. I even tried wiping and installing Leopard (my original OS) thinking that if I went through a Two-OS upgrade process it would solve the issues. I'm currently back to a usable state, but I'm not convinced I'm through with all this.

Here are my recommendations for an OS X re-install:

• Do a clean install (wipe hard drive), because if you’re anything like me, there are many applications, and files left behind from applications, that you don’t need, and I like to keep things clean.
• DON'T transfer Applications (Migration Assistant OR Time Machine). Install the applications you need fresh, and don’t touch their prefs files.
• Home Folder: Copy it as a whole to the desktop, then duplicate it and erase the old copy. This will take a while, but it should reset all permissions to what they should be, since your old account is seen as foreign to the new system (And yes, you SHOULD be able to just “chmod 755” to it instead of a lengthy duplication, but for whatever reason the changes didn’t stick for me once I restarted).
• Organize your home folder data to their proper locations in new system but only copy what is absolutely necessary. Library/Preferences files, for example, should be left alone; they are the main culprit when it comes to random errors and anomalies in day-to-day use.
• Run a verify/repair disk permissions in Disk Utility. *This shouldn't find any problems, but just do it anyway.

So my rule of thumb is to NOT use Migration Assistant or the Time Machine interface, because they seem to create unsolvable permissions errors. Also, copy back only what you need, which should only be document-type files, rather than applications, or files that affect applications.

Does anyone think this is overkill? I certainly do, but after wiping my system 5 times using different restore methods, this is the only way I was able to get the system running without wanting to defenestrate my MacBook. I thought Migration Assistant was designed to copy over an entire User, updating the permissions to work on the new installation. This, however, has never been my experience.

Please share your experiences and suggestions (unless your upgrade went perfectly the first time. Then there's not really much point in hearing from you). If anyone knows something about this that I don't, I'm very anxious to learn!

Thanks!