Some people recommend backing up your entire ~/Library folder. But I find there are a lot of things in there I wouldn't want replaced if doing a clean install. So I selectively back up certain contents of that folder, along with certain contents of the system level /Library folder.
You should poke around in ~/Library and see what's in there that you need. Here's a list of what I backup to get you started:
~/Library/Application Support and ~/Library/Preferences are where most of your application settings live. You should go through each of those folders' subfolders and see which ones you need.
Notably, Address Book's database is stored in an Application Support subfolder while some other Mac OS preinstalled apps have their folders directly at the ~/Library level. It's a good idea to look through the folders at that level as well. For example:
~/Library/Mail has your Mail.app data.
~/Library/Calendars has your iCal data.
~/Library/iTunes has all your iOS device backups and iTunes specific scripts.
~/Library/Scripts is probably where you install scripts if you use AppleScripts as folder actions.
~/Library/ScriptingAdditions holds any AppleScript additions you've installed.
~/Library/Keychains is the default location using Keychain Access to save passwords.
~/Library/Fonts for all fonts installed for the current user.
~/Library/ColorSync for all color profiles installed for the current user.
~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist has your Safari bookmarks. The other stuff in this folder is a good example of what I'd like to NOT be restored after a clean install.
The structure of the system level /Library folder closely matches that of the ~/Library folder, so if there are things in there (fonts, color profiles, scripts etc.) installed "for all users", you should back those up too.
Hope that helps you get started!
Question: Is the [AEBS + USB/AirDisk + Time Machine] combo finally,
officially supported? On Mountain Lion or something? I couldn't find
documentation along those lines but since we're talking about backups,
I just want to make sure I'm not following an unsupported mechanism.
It was not supported as of Mountain Lion (see OS X Mountain Lion: Disks you can use with Time Machine) but according to the newest KB article (Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac) it is now officially supported:
Time Machine is the built-in backup feature of your Mac. To use it, you
need an external storage solution, sold separately:
- External hard drive connected to a USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt port on your Mac
- Time Capsule or macOS Server on your network
- External hard drive connected to the USB port of an AirPort Extreme base station on your network
I couldn't find any information about whether this functionality was added as an Airport Express firmware update or was introduced with a specific OS version (or both), and thus I can't provide a firmware/OS version support matrix, but from
Backup disks you can use with Time Machine the minimum requirements seem to be:
Best Answer
When I posted, I suspected that this was specifically related to the Yosemite update, as I'd seen a few hits in Google with similar things (but no fixes), especially since I had already restored the meta-backup meant to address exactly the issue discussed in the older Q's of generic network disk corruption.
After reading the Troubleshooting post referenced by the older Q, I learn that this message is produced by a verification (fsck) that's run once a month. This means that whatever anomaly it found was not something that occurred in the previous backup, but could have occurred any time in the last month! Now, I think the correlation with this “happening” right after the Yosemite upgrade may be that the last-check-date gets lost or it intentionally performs a check right away after installing. So, any problem that occurred in the last few weeks suddenly is brought to your attention.
If this is checked on purpose, I think it would be better to check before installing the update, to give people a chance to get a working backup of their system before the update.
I rolled back the NAS volume another week, and all was well. Just let it finish “finding” and then checking the disk.