Upgraded to Panther, but should probably have reformatted

[GeeYouEye]

I got Panther yesterday, backed up my hard drive, and installed it via upgrade. Only thing is, I'm not seeing much of the performance gains that other people are, especially in snappiness. So I think I'll reinstall, and wipe the drive at the same time. So here's the question: It's easy to restore all of my applications, but how do I restore the preferences? While for some apps, it's not a big issue, it is important for some, like OmniWeb, iChat, iCal, Word, DNSUpdate, QuickTime, Mail, etc. So is there any way to do it?

 

[Makosuke]

The easiest way to restore the preferences would be to copy the Preferences folder from your current install (back it up on something) and move it to the new one.

A better idea, though, would be to only move the prefs for applications that you really want to keep--this will protect you from accidentally copying a bum pref from an older version, for example. Just sift through Preferences looking for things that belong to applications you want to keep (back up the whole Prefs folder just to be safe, in case you miss something), and move those to your clean install.

If you missed something, go back to the backed-up version and move over whatever needs to be moved.

One more tip, though: If you did an "Upgrade" install, you could try doing an "Archive and Install, Preserving Users"--that'll keep all your prefs, but from what I've heard is somewhat more reliable than a straight Upgrade. Seemed to work well enough for me, anyway.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

I'm taking the plunge tomorrow. My copy of Panther is guarunteed by Royal Mail to arrive by 12 noon. I have backed up all my important items (uni work, preferences, iTunes library to DVD). Thing is I have no more blank DVDs, no external hard drive (except my brother's iPod when I get home for xmas in 2 weeks) and there's a couple of videos that I don't want to lose.

So I was going to do an upgrade install. I think I may do a clean install when I get back home in 2 weeks. Then I'll have all my software CDs to be able to re-install Office, iDVD, etc. That'll give me a good chance of clearing all the rubbish from my hard drive (despite it only being 2 months old!).

I've heard about upgrade and archive installs. Don't really know much about it. As Jaguar has run flawlessly on my computer since I got it I don't want to have a massive headache tomorrow. But I'm itching for Expose and the fast Preview application!