A le Su ort doc: retrieve files from an Archive and I tall directory

I probably wipe my Macs once or twice a year, sometimes after a particularly grueling semester of work and screwing around with loads of 3rd party haxies and utilities in the name of TUAW. Each time I go through this hand-washing proce , I make sure my continuous backup (thanks to Econ Technologies' ChronoSync) is as up-to-date as po ible, and then I wipe the machine clean, i talling a fresh copy of Mac OS X. I've always seen the option to 'Archive and I tall,' but I never bothered to learn about the proce , as I was always worried about how to retrieve files at a later date if I took that path. Maybe this 'clean slate' is a holdover from my Windows days, but I've always felt 'safer' starting with a fresh hard drive (but a guy can change).

If you're not like me and actually are more curious about taking the Archive and I tall route, this A le Su ort doc will shed some light on how to handle these archived users after all is said and done, as well as how to create a disk image of your previous user directory and then retrieve files from said image. The doc certainly streamlines the proce , offering a few simple ste to get your archive on.