Reinstalling OSX

[aphex.twin]

After two years my MBP (mid-2009, OSX 10.6.8) is starting to slow down quite significantly in terms of booting up, launching programmes and switching between tabs when more than 6-7 are open on Safari.

I imagine this is partially due to the amount of junk that I've installed/deleted over the years and a general accumulation of redundant entries in the registry (or the OSX equivalent of the Windows registry). Add caches from applications such as Spotify and it's easy to see why it's getting so slow.

Anyhow, I think it's time for a fresh install of OSX following an erase (format) of the hard drive. However, I would like to keep some things the way they are currently when I reinstall OSX. These are

- Safari bookmarks (not too difficult, could write them down and bookmark again)
- My entire iTunes library including play counts, ratings and playlists and all the apps/albums that I have downloaded off the store (probably the most important)
- My documents folder and iPhoto (again, quite important)

The rest I'm not particularly bothered about. Applications can be reinstalled without much of a hassle so that doesn't concern me.

I keep a time machine backup of everything on an external drive. I would however only like to restore these three things once I have formatted and reinstalled OSX. As mentioned earlier I don't want my applications to be recovered as a fresh install of them would probably be ideal to keep clutter to a minimum.

Is there any way I can specifically recover these three aspects of my system from TM following a clean install of OSX? I'll be going back to 10.6.1 I imagine, not upgrading to Lion (yet).

Thanks.

 

[mulo]

simply clearing the app's cache and running this command in terminal can do wonders.

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

 

[cinematicme]

Here try this, much more versatile then Time Machine. http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/

Backup is a simple to use backup/restore utility.
iBackup backs up the data, system and applications settings of a user.

I use it all the time (backups are also significantly smaller then time machine. Also something to note, when you back up with Time Machine it backs up ALOT of files including plists and application support and some system files.

These are not needed for a reinstall (unless you want EVERYTHING to be the same) so doing a fresh install (ie nuke an pave) with only the needed files backed up is key Otherwise you'll have old plists and such cluttering everything up. It would be like walking in to a clean kitchen with muddy shoes on.

 

[aphex.twin]

Here try this, much more versatile then Time Machine. http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/

I use it all the time (backups are also significantly smaller then time machine. Also something to note, when you back up with Time Machine it backs up ALOT of files including plists and application support and some system files.

These are not needed for a reinstall (unless you want EVERYTHING to be the same) so doing a fresh install (ie nuke an pave) with only the needed files backed up is key Otherwise you'll have old plists and such cluttering everything up. It would be like walking in to a clean kitchen with muddy shoes on.

That's the kind of thing I'm looking for. Just out of interest would I be able to achieve a similar result with Time Machine? Also, how do you restore your files following a fresh install? Do you have to reinstall and use iBackup?

Thanks.

 

[cinematicme]

That's the kind of thing I'm looking for. Just out of interest would I be able to achieve a similar result with Time Machine? Also, how do you restore your files following a fresh install? Do you have to reinstall and use iBackup?

Thanks.

As far as i know you can't be selective with time machine. When you make a backup using iBackup it saves the locations of all the files, so if you restore to the same home folder name (whatever your user name on the machine is now) all you have to do is download the app, set the directory of the backup and hit restore, everything you want goes right back to where it was.

its best to put the backup on the root of the drive

for example, if you set it to backup to an external drive and you use the root of the drive it will be /backup when you restore set the backups location to / not /backup



For bookmarks you might want to look in to xmarks for safari http://www.xmarks.com