how to go about putting stuff back on a new hard drive

[ifjake]

i just got a new hard drive for my laptop, and i was wondering a few things about making the switch from the old drive to the new one, softwarewise.

i have a enclosure that i'm going to keep my old drive for portable and backup use. one option i've read would to use carbon copy cloner or some similar kind of program and just copy one drive to the other straight. my idea was, why not just install panther on the new drive from scratch (after formatted of course) so that i get the benifits of having a squeaky clean fresh start? the only issue is, i want to keep my old user, and all of its documents and its keychain and stuff. could i just make my first user on the new-drive/new-install-of-panther the same as my old one and just copy over my user directory from the old drive in the enclosure through firewire? though i guess it would also be good to rebuild my preferences from scratch as well. there are a few things that i would definitely want to carry over from my old user account on the old drive: my iCal calender, my addressbook, my keychain, my email boxes and account information, network configuration (wireless passwords and such)... um, let's see, anything else... well everything else is simply documents. like it's obvious where i'd copy my music and documents and pictures and etc from, but i'm not sure where that list of stuff above is located, and if it's possible to do it this way without it being a pain or something. any of you know where to find this stuff and if i can just copy and paste and all will be well?

 

[ifjake]

okay maybe that was too wordy or something. how would you transfer a user from an install of Panther on one hard drive to a new install of Panther on a new drive? same user, different drives. can it be done and how? thanks.

 

[wordmunger]

Yes, it can be done -- I did it when I was debugging my previous computer. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly how I did it. It was fairly involved, including going into terminal and typing a few commands. The key was to keep the same short username on your new HD.

Search through the Apple Knowledgbase. There should be something there for you.

 

[ifjake]

cool just so long as it's possible. i've been reading around and now i'm somewhat worried that even just drag and dropping personal documents (music, pics, actual documents) would cause some problems with file permissions and whatnot. i was checking through the Apple Knowledgebase but i've been giving that a rest. that thing seems real bogged down, with old OS 8 stuff floating around. it's cool that they still have that stuff available, but it makes it harder to keep your search criteria general enough to find what you want and sift through all the junk that comes up. i guess i'll give it another go. thanks.

if anyone could point me in the right direction it would be gladly appreciated. i'll probably get the drives swapped tomorrow. thanks.

 

[wPod]

this is what i did when i upgraded from my iBook to PB. . . its kinda similar. i had a full backup copy of the iBook on an external drive. i opened the user home folder on the firewire drive and coppied everything to the new user on the PB. (it asked if i wanted to replace the folders such as "documents" etc. . . and i said yes to all) then from the root directory of the firewire drive copy over the library folder. once done run a repair premisions on the new drive. this worked fine for all documents etc. i think i had to build most of my keychain again and a couple random prefs, but most stuff like iTunes info, play count etc was transfered over fine. this might be a partial solution if you dont mind changing a few small prefs.

 

[wordmunger]

cool just so long as it's possible. i've been reading around and now i'm somewhat worried that even just drag and dropping personal documents (music, pics, actual documents) would cause some problems with file permissions and whatnot. i was checking through the Apple Knowledgebase but i've been giving that a rest. that thing seems real bogged down, with old OS 8 stuff floating around. it's cool that they still have that stuff available, but it makes it harder to keep your search criteria general enough to find what you want and sift through all the junk that comes up. i guess i'll give it another go. thanks.

if anyone could point me in the right direction it would be gladly appreciated. i'll probably get the drives swapped tomorrow. thanks.

I think this was the article I was using:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106941

I used the "manual backup" procedure. I think it should do what you want. Make sure you copy the libraries, too.

 

[ifjake]

yeah i think i just found that same article. thanks. this should work out wonderfully.

i have a different sort of question though it's sort of related. going along with my clean start idea, i'm finding a lot of extra junk in my Library folder in my user directory, particularly my preferences, and a little bit in application support. essentially it's stuff for programs i've deleted. would deleting my preferences cause any problems? the only preferences i really would want to keep is stuff i've done with the System Preferences app. keyboard shortcuts, and WEP passwords and such. for regular apps i have no problem rebuilding my preferences. i never really change much unless it's something i change back and forth a lot anyway. what do you all think?

 

[Mechcozmo]

Don't delete something if you aren't sure what it is.

If you KNOW that it is for an old app you trashed and don't need anymore, fine. They are really dinky and small, so it doesn't matter a heck of a lot if you trash them. If you trash something that you still use, the app will recreate it and you will be left resetting everything. Its a good way to troubleshoot but it can be a PITA.

I'd leave them. You've got plenty of space...