What Folders Are Vital To Back-up?

If you're using Mac OS X 10.5.x, you can use TimeMachine. It's great and works fine for everything. If you do it by hand, backup your home folder (plus any other users' home folders), the Applications folder (or at least the user-installed apps in that folder) and any Application Support folders. I'm sure there are more, though. Why not simply backup everything? It saves so much time (and wastes some space)...
 
Yes, I didn't mean you didn't have to have a backup drive... I just meant that if you used TimeMachine (with a backup drive, of course!), you wouldn't have to care about which folders to backup, because it simply backups everything. Saves time (for restoring as well as planning, because restoring's so easy and there's nothing to plan, really) and wastes space (by really backing up everything and filling the partition or drive you give to TimeMachine for its use).
 
You need a backup drive to use Time Machine, but you could back up to CD-R or DVD±R yoursself instead. That's what I do. You can't beat DVDs for cost-per-MB.

Your Home folder is the most important thing to back up. For convenience, I moved everything I can that isn't personal (like my music collection, downloads, etc.) out of my Home folder, so it's small enough to fit on a single DVD. That makes backing up a snap.

I also like to back up my root Library folder regularly, but it's not as important.
 
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