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To: Ross Penner <ross.penner@gmail.com>
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From: Rakhesh Sasidharan <rakhesh@rakhesh.com>
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Cc: User questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: Downgrading from current
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On Sun, 29 Jul 2007, Ross Penner wrote:
> I have a lot of data on my /usr partition that I would rather not have to
> backup and then readd to the system. is there a way I can reinstall and
> leave parts of the file system intact? I assume that I can use the same
> partitions but I'm worried that reinstalling will clean the partitions.

As long as your /usr is on a separate partition, you can choose to mount 
it at some other point and not format while re-installing FreeBSD. I don't 
recollect the exact steps off-hand, but I remember there being a "Toggle 
NewFS" or something like that option on the screen where you make 
partitions. Just toggle it off and the partition won't get formatted.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Rakhesh