Hard drive refuses to boot

Yeah, normally both the itunes lib and iphoto lib are in your user folder.
That means that it would be enought to backup your user.

btw, i won't take any responibility when you screw up your computer...

 

If you want to be able to boot off of the new drive without having to redo all of your user preferences use Carbon Copy Cloner. That might copy over your authorization info so that you don't have to reauthorize. If not, and all else fails, give Apple a call and they can deauthorize all of your computers and you'll get a fresh start with authorization.

 

Yes, use CarbonCopyCloner for this, dragging and dropping will often miss files and leave you with bad permissions. I'd clone the whole drive if possible, while backing up your user folder *should* work in theory, many installers modify /Library instead of ~/Library like they should... so you might lose application support, resources, or fonts in the transition.

CCC should move the iTMS authorization, unless for some odd reason the authorization file stores data about the drive it's installed on. If that happens, a quick call to Apple will fix it, as stated above. But you shouldn't have to worry about it.

paul

 

CCC works well but you may not need it. (It just nearly saved my ass on a failing drive but the stuff was too corrupt so I had to nuke it anyway.)

You can use the Archive and Install method in the Restore CD's install options or retail OS X CD's Install options. This gives you the option of installing 10.n fresh with your original User and Networking files intact.

I should also ask you: Does the drive make any clicking, grinding or rythmic spinup noises that are above and beyond the normal sounds?

If the drive makes any of these noises it may be unrecoverable.