Reinstalling OSX, Backup questions

[Accidental-DJ]

Hi, Im looking to reinstall my OSX and traktor on my machine and get rid of a lot of things that i dont need.

Questions regarding itunes, What would be the best way to back my itunes?

I want to have it all backed up but only leave the songs i dj with on my laptop and have everything else on my HDD?

Is there anything i need to do with traktor before i do a reinstall etc?

Also how do i save Programs i have bought like mixed in key and Mackeeper etc..

Wanting to do this to get the best out of my macbook before i decide on upgrading

[photojojo]

Get everything sorted and organized like you want then run time machine or Super Duper.

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDup...scription.html

[GeekGod]

Time machine is great for this. Backup your hard disk with time machine and during OSX installation you can tell it to restore from a Time Machine backup disk. Afterwards you will not even know you reinstalled as everything will "just work".

[Accidental-DJ]

Thanks for the quick response

Question. So if i delete things i dont want on it anymore and move songs another HDD etc and reinstall the OSX?

Will it make a big difference just using time machine, or would it be better to do a install and not use time machine and just slowly download things again?

Im looking for the best way to do a install without having files on the macbook i dont need?

Can i chose to drag only some things from time machine or not?

Thanks

[Karlos Santos]

Time Machine simply works. Its f*cking brilliant.

I know CCC and Super Duper are great applications but CCC failed me badly and Time Machine just did the job, no effing about and it restored a whole 470gig system in 4 hours.

You can back up with TM and then if you want you can just install OSX and restore parts of the Time Machine backup as you go along or the whole lot.

When your TM disk is connected you have the abiility to look back at your desktop at any date that you made a backup and restore a folder as it was from that date.

No-one will ever convince me to use anything else other than Time Machine unless it is Dr.Who and he gives me his Sonic Screwdriver.

[Accidental-DJ]

THANKYOU! i will use it tonight

My goal is to do a back up incase something go's wrong.

Then reinstall the whole OSX again, Add traktor pro 2, Mixed in Key, and slowly build a DJ only music macbook.

I also want to keep my other tracks on a seperate HDD and just listen to them through my ipod when needed

Ps, Is it hard to add little things from TM like traktor, or just certain tracks from itunes?

Ill back up tonight an have a play around

[Karlos Santos]

No its easy.
But i wouldnt do that.

Id restore the whole lot and then delete things you dont want off the internal drive.
It will take just as long to restore iTunes and Traktor than it will the whole system.
My only issue was that i Restored iTunes and Traktor. Traktor was not reading the iTunes collection properly due to path changes so i restored the whole system and then deleted anything i didnt want from the new hard drive knowing that it is still on my Time Machine backup.

This is all you need: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427

[Accidental-DJ]

Sweet thankyou, ill do a backup tonight of everything, Do a fresh install,
Add 2Gb of ram to my macbook pro

So if i had a 120Gb itunes collection in 19 April - Backed it up. Then deleted it,

I could go back to that date incase i Deleted a purchased item?

Sounds really cool to me.

Can i browse different back up dates at one time also, and grab stuff out of it?

[Karlos Santos]

Erm... yeah i think so. You can use the timeline to back in time to when the file was present on the machine and restore it.

Time Machine will delete old backups when the time machine drive is full so dont max it out.

[D_G_]

Keep in mind that things which aren't on your system for very long don't tend to last very long in the Time Machine backups either...

The hourly backups get consolidated down to one daily backup (i.e. only one of those hourlies is kept). The daily backups will go down to weekly and then monthly.

So (assuming you're letting it back up regularly) if something has been on your system for less than a day when you delete it, it might not be backed up for very long at all. Less than a week will last longer, etc.