Sorry, I meant this for a fresh install.
Choose not to format your /home partition during install. I've done a number of fresh installs leaving /home and /usr/local intact. I also have a couple of large data storage partitions (/honker and /godzirra) that I leave intact as well. Just format '/', '/boot', '/usr' and 'swap'.
-- B r e n d a n M c E n a n e y http://www.speakeasy.org/~mcenaney B o s t o n M a s s a c h u s e t t s
