Applications missing in Home folder?

Hi,
I was trying to do a back-up of my home/users folder which should essentially contain everything on my hard drive, when I noticed that in my home folder, the applications folder is empty. How is the best way to put all my my applications back in there? I tried drag and drop, but it looked like it was going to copy them all. Any help would be much appreciated,
Regards,

Hi Alex,
Applications aren't normally kept in your home folder. If they were, they would be available only to you. This is designed as a multi-user system, even if you have only your one account on it.
Applications are normally stored in the Applications folder at the top of the disk hierarchy. Click your hard disk icon twice. You'll see Applications, Library and System (the operating system), and Users -- all accounts, yours and any others. This is where your data goes, along with any private applications.
You may have an Applications (OS9) folder, Maybe a System (OS9) folder, and possibly a few other things at that top level.
The optimum backup strategy is to "clone" your internal HD to the external drive. Clone as in "copy everything" and also "make the external drive bootable." That gives you a backup not only of the data but also the settings and current state of your computer and the ability to use the computer from the external drive even if the internal drive fails.
Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper are two great utilities that can clone your internal drive and do "incremental" backups (only changed files) later.
Good luck,
John

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