I mostly got it right, but there were a few gotchas that bit me as I upgraded to Leopard from Tiger.  I always do a clean install instead of an upgrade since it helps clear out the cruft that builds up on my machine.  Anyway, here’s a few of the more important steps in the backup/restore process:

•  De-Authorize your existing iTunes account.  From iTunes, Store/Deauthorize Computer.
• Create extra backups of contacts and your address book (file backup or export, not sure which on Tiger — in Leopard it’s moved to export archive)
• Copy your ~/Library/ folder to an external device, but /NOT/ a FAT32 drive if possible.  You’ll lose the file permissions and it’s a real hassle to set them back (lesson learned).
• Backup your Music, Photos folders as necessary (mine are moved around a bit)
• Can’t wait for TimeMachine so I don’t have to worry about much of this next time!

Once you’ve got your new Leopard up and going, you’ll want to restore the following key bits:

• Login keychain (I renamed my existing login.keychain file in ~/Library/Keychains/ and then just copied over the old folder contents into the Keychains directory)
• Watch out for this potential calendar gotcha.
• Also, despite Mail.app saying it was “upgrading” my database, when I first ran it, I didn’t have all my accounts still set up.  This might have been a result of the keychain not put back, or a permission error.  Whatever the cause, after restoring the ~/Library/Mail directory again, setting permissions, and making sure to copy back the mail preferences file as well, everything worked fine.

Posted by Jordan on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 9:49 am.