I’m in the process of taking the Tiger plunge. Right now I’m taking my time (better safe than sorry) backing everything up.

For those of you who don’t know, Tiger is the latest build of OSX that has been getting all the hype recently – a Longhorn killer so to speak, but I would keep those sentiments on hold until Longhorn actually debuts.

Anyways, my main concern is retaining all my data since I’m planning to do a clean install. So I’m trying to list down (and backup) all folders and files that I may need.

This post may be useful in the future when I plan to upgrade yet again. So I might as well list down the databases/files I usually use.

The easiest way is to backup your whole ~/Library folder (the ~ means user directory) Of course, you may have a bunch of MP3s there (your iTunes library), so I suggest backing that up separately. You may also want to backup /Library (in the root directory) for good measure… you never know if and when you may need it.

Anyways, if you back up your ~/Library folder, then you “should” be set (Applications, preferences etc. etc. should all be there) but I’m listing these down specifically for my sake.

• MP3s and iTunes library database file!
• Webdev folder(s)
• IM contact list
• RSS reader prefs (or at the very least, a recently exported OPML file)
• E-mail files
• Documents folders
• Browser favorites/links
• FTP links/prefs
• Applications (optional)
• Application preferences (optional usually in the Library folders)
• Photoshop actions/plugins, etc.
• Fonts
• NOTES! (stickeys, etc.)
• Local SQL DBs!
• Apache Configurations

That’s all I can think of as of now. If you think I’ve missed something, feel free to comment.

Changing the subject a little, I now really appreciate my iPod photo – especially that I got the 60GB version as it can be pretty handy for backing up stuff. I just reformatted, then enabled disk mode and am now dumping my whole iTunes Library folder (which has the songs and database) on it.

Hopefully, the rest that need to be backed up won’t be too big, and I’ll just back them up in the PC via the network.