Upgrading OS (backing up, etc.) questions

[iceblade]

I have a family pack copy of snow leopard, and I am interested in upgrading my computer's Leopard installation to Snow Leopard, but first, I want to back up many of my files. I am getting an external hard drive, probably a western digital 320 gig something or other (my computer's hard drive is 160 gigs, so space shouldn't be an issue).

Of course, hopefully the upgrade to Snow Leopard will work without a problem, and I won't have to restore anything from backups, but accidents DO happen...

I guess my main question is, can Time Machine back up all my music, word files, movie files, applications, etc., without backing up the whole system of Leopard, so that I can then bring all those files into Snow Leopard with no problems? Or do I need to manually back up all that stuff, and then once I am in Snow Leopard, bring it all back?

For future reference of just making sure I keep everything backed up, is a Time Machine backup good enough? Or should I manually back up every paper I write for school, in addition to every media project I do, and all the music on my harddrive?

Is there anything I may be over looking?

Thanks!

 

[ayeying]

You might be a little bit more paranoid. The odds of every backup failing at once is just.. not possible.

Time Machine is possible to back up everything as long as they're not excluded. Time Machine can also restore your entire back up, making it look like you didn't lose or had a crash or incident, etc. However, Time Machine isn't 100% proof, nor is any other method but it is a good start if you never do back ups.

I would just do a time machine back up then upgrade from there. Even if you cannot restore from the time machine back up, you can still retrieve your files.