![]() The instructions found on this site will show you what needs to be backed up (it’s all in your ~/Library folder) and how to restore it to the new computer. In my case, I have several email accounts and several years of saved email that I wanted to keep on the new computer. You should also remember to back up any other data that may not be in your own user directory on the Mac. when it’s connected to your computer, so I always have copies of my pictures in the cloud,and it’s that Dropbox directory that acts as the source when I import pictures into my main iPhoto library. Dropbox has a feature that will automatically download new pictures from a camera, iPhone, etc. Apple’s iCloud will accomplish some of this, but I prefer to manually copy the pictures into the external iPhoto library once a month. This means remembering to update the external library when I load pics from my devices to iPhoto on the computer. For iPhone apps, podcasts, and other items, FatCat provided an excellent user guide to walk you through the steps to back those up.įor iPhoto pictures stored on my Mac, I simply make sure that the external library (managed by iPhoto Library Manager) is organized similarly to the one on my Mac. The music was already on the external drive, so the playlist merely organized those songs into a playlist that would be easily copied back once the rebuild was complete. These applications have come in very handy in recent years, as we all switch to lower-capacity SSD drives.įor iTunes music stored on my Mac, I created a single playlist with all my songs in it and then copied that playlist to my “main” library kept on an external drive. ![]() These programs allow you to copy only the music and photos that you want to keep on your computer, while allowing you to keep everything else on another drive. I manage these libraries with two excellent programs from Fat Cat Software: iPhoto Library Manager and PowerTunes. I store all my data files (except for photos and music) on Dropbox, which means that there is always a synced copy of all my data available in the cloud.įor iTunes music and iPhoto images I keep a smaller set of songs and pictures on my computer with my “full” libraries on external drives. Most users’ data on the Mac will be found in the /Users/ directory on the Mac, so you should make sure at the very least that you back up that directory to an external drive, simply by copying them with the Finder. Every file on my computer is always available on an external hard drive in the event I need it. ![]() ![]() I am religious about using SuperDuper to keep an updated, bootable image of my computer’s hard drive at the ready in case of a crash. The most important step before starting any rebuild is to make sure your data is backed up. Before You Start: Back Up Your Data and Take Inventory If this guide helps you, please let me know!ġ. I had a bunch of questions before and during the rebuild, and I decided to document my experience so all the answers could be in one place if anyone decides to do this on their own. It might have been a case of wishful thinking, but my computer always seemed to run better after a “slash and burn.” With the Mac, it never seemed necessary to do this as its internal maintenance processes always seemed to take care of performance issues.Īfter about a week with the new computer I decided I would do the “slash and burn” on my new Macbook Pro. The idea was that reformatting and reloading would get rid of all the old files and applications that cluttered up your hard drive and system performance would improve. In the old days of Windows98/XP it used to be a common practice to completely wipe your system and reload everything to give yourself a fresh start. Over the years I’ve done “clean installs” and removed old apps that I didn’t use or weren’t supported, but in all the time I’ve owned a Mac I’ve only done a true rebuild a couple of times. That migration included stuff that went back to my first Mac, the iBook I bought in 2005, as well as my iTunes library that was originally migrated from the PC I owned before I had the iBook. When I turned on the new computer I dutifully ran Migration Assistant and copied all my old stuff over to the new computer. I recently bought a brand-new MacBook Pro Retina 13″ to replace my five-year-old 15″ MacBook Pro.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |