Quick and dirty restore?

[Ludde]

Hi!

I've reinstalled OSX due to some unfortunate events with my harddrive. I did get a backup(for a price) and I'm curious if I can restore all settings and mail and favorites just by dragging a folder from the backup to the current installation. I'm rather new with Macs, but my first idea would be to just copy the username/library folder to the current installation. I'm not too keen on reinstalling again(even though it's lightyears better than reinstalling Windows) so I thought I'd ask here before I try anything.

 

[2nyRiggz]

Take a look at this:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86710

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301239


See if that help you out.


Bless

 

[Ludde]

Would it be a decent idea to just restore all the plist files then?

 

[Eidorian]

Replacing ~/Library should replace all your settings and mail.

 

[Ludde]

Ok, so there is no risk for any problems by replacing ~/library ?
I did replace ~/username/library and that fixed the address book among other things

 

[Eidorian]

Ok, so there is no risk for any problems by replacing ~/library ?
I did replace ~/username/library and that fixed the address book among other things

No risk other then you overwrote it. You can seriously trash your home directory as much as you want and not damage the system. Now your user files are another story.

Replacing your new ~/Library with your old one will just give you your old settings back. I strongly suggest logging out at least for good measure.

 

[Ludde]

So ~/library and ~/username/library are ok to replace? I assume that ~/system/library would not be recommendable to replace?

 

[Eidorian]

"~/" means in your user directory. (Well root level being your user directory.)

There should be no ~/System. Unless you made a folder with that name.

 

[Ludde]

This is a bit confusing since there are three library directories. One directly under Macintosh HD, one in the System folder and one in my user dir.

 

[Eidorian]

This is a bit confusing since there are three library directories. One directly under Macintosh HD, one in the System folder and one in my user dir.

/Library (Default settings and system wide plug-ins for OS X) [Macintosh HD -> Library]

/System/Library (Essentially the system files for OS X) [Macintosh HD -> System -> Library]

~/Library (User personal preferences, settings, and caches) [Macintosh HD -> Users -> Username -> Library]

 

[Ludde]

Thanks

 

[Eidorian]

Thanks

Not the first time.