<Solved>Install New Using Old Home Partition

[Ray2047]

I always seem to screw this up. What is the best way to do a fresh install and keep the existing Home partition?

[YouCanToo]

Perhaps making a backup first is the best way. When you install the new OS,  DO NOT format the home directory.

[T6]

first, you must have a /home partition to not to format

if you don't have one, backup your personal files and important config files and similar stuff inside you /home/thenameofyouruser/ folder and wipe the hard disk containing the os and everything else you don't care to loose and after the process copy back things to the new /home/thenameofyouruser/ folder

[Ray2047]

first, you must have a /home partition to not to format

I do but sometimes in the past even though I chose not to format it it over wrote it anyway. Sometimes it works for me sometimes it doesn't. I don't have a clue how to backup. That's something people always say but never explain how.

[Ramchu]

I don't have a clue how to backup

All a backup is is saving your files to some other device or a section of your Hard Drive that you use for data and are not going to
format.
Just save your files to a USB Stick or an external Hard Drive or write them to a CD/DVD

EDIT : After replying to your post, I got to looking around concerning backing up and found
the following that may answer some of your questions about doing a backup.
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,90756.0.html

[Ray2047]

Ramchu, I appreciate your answer. Immediately after that post I tried to copy my home folder to DVD using K3B. That is when K3B started asking questions I didn't really know the answer to like "Do you want to follow sym links". Kept answering yes to K3B till it failed before I even tried to record. I hope your link gives me some help Thanks for answering.

[Ray2047]

Well I got lucky and got it installed.

[T6]

i abandoned dvds to keep backups some time ago, especially when i discovered that only my family pictures can fill 3 dvds and that is less than half of my personal files

i also abandoned k3b, it is not what it used to be anymore

i normally use a usb external disk or a usb flash drive, also a extra hard disk inside the machine that is never formated and when i reinstall, i unplug to avoid sad accidents

i just copy what i know it is important and the rest like basic configurations and themes, i can download or reconfigure in less than one hour