Reinstalling OS, backing up, etc...

[twomiracles]

Hi, all. I've had my iMac for over a year now and planned on upgrading to Leopard, but just can't do it right now. I do have alot of garbage on here and would really like to just do a fresh install of the OS. I got the trial version of SuperDuper today and have an 80Gb External Hard Drive that I can back up to. So, can I just back up to that, reinstall the OS and then go find what I need as far as bookmarks, program settings, e-mail, etc...? I want to reinstall my programs as well, Photoshop has been running pretty slow and maybe it's the former PC user in me that makes me think this way, but I'm hoping that a clean install of the OS and only the applications I'm using will help it run better.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Will I have everything I need if I just back up the whole drive to the Externa.?

Thanks!

 

[NAG]

Doing an archive install is probably all you need to do. This preserves most settings (if not all) and gives you a fresh system install.

Regardless of what you do backing up is a good idea.

 

[twomiracles]

Okay, I have emptied and formatted the External Drive and it is ready for me to back up to. Here's my question, though...if I do archive and install, it says that most third-party apps will be migrated if I "preserve user and network settings"...but if I don't, what's the difference between backing up to the external and doing fresh install and doing this? I really want it to be clean and back to running like it was when I got it, so I don't want all the third-party apps to stay on, that's part of the reason I want to do this reinstall of the OS. Is there a way to backup just user and network settings, but not keep the third party applications?

Thanks!

 

[orpheus1120]

Boot from your OS dvd, run disk utility from the DVD and format your mac hard drive and do a clean OS install (instead of archive and install) after that.