home directory
 

I want to format my linux partition. If I caopy my home directory, will it save my prefences? If not, what do I need to do?

Your /home directory contains user data and preferences
Your /etc/ directory contains systemwide config files.

why do you need to format it?

Are you changing /home to a different drive?

make sure that the gid and uid of users are same after the re-installation.(it is not necessary). if you have home in seperate partition it will be better to keep it as it is

Better note doen guids and uids of your users. In new system give them back to the right users (uids and guids matter, not names).

For some reason i have 4 of every rpm intsalled, 1 from Redhat 7.2 and 3 from 7.3. I have been trying to clean it up, but this is insane, I would rather format my HD and install a clean redhat 7.3.

So you are reinstalling and you want to save and restore your home folder.