Need advice on backing up itunes and firefoxs on osx

[Heller]

just purchased a 2tb external HD for 55$ shipped from staples (hot deal?)

my mac is running a bit of sluggish (already tried de-fraging and would like to back up my Firefox tabs passwords bookmakt etc, along with my itunes music and playlist, and my iphone4, contacts ring-tones apps and all the essentials,

how do i go about doing this for a noobie in osx? and a noobie in backing up and reinstalling everything.

any help would be appreciated thanks.

 

[dclive]

Time machine to back up everything.

If you use another profile does it speed back up?

 

[MotionMan]

Carbon Copy Cloner.

MotionMan

 

[TheStu]

Absolute noob? Time Machine.

 

[Heller]

so whats the easiest to back up the mbp? its sluggish and want it to run like new with a fresh install of osx, carboncoppy or time machine? and how do i get it to back up only my music/play-lists and iphone contacts (as well as everything on my iphone 4) and my firefox tabs/passwords?

 

[dclive]

Again, Time Machine is the best, Apple-supported method.

If you use another user profile, does it speed things up? Please answer the question so we can help you.

 

[lokiju]

You do a Time Machine backup to a external hard drive of the drive(s) you want restored that you intend on deleting when you do a reinstall.

After the reinstall and when you do your 1st boot it ask if you want to restore from a Time Machine backup if I'm not mistaken. At that point, plug back in the external USB drive that you did your Time Machine backups to and select it as the source.

There is a huge amount of info with more detail on how to do this out there.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4413#3