Best 'clean up' before flashing ROMs

The *noob's guide* to clean up:

Make sure first that you've back up your sms/contact/apps.

SMS can be backed up using various apps from market e.g. SMS back up+ 

Contacts can be synced directly to your Gmail account.

Apps - I use Titanium back up. But there might be options available e.g. MyBackUp Root . Titanium back up seems to me like 'the' solution. If you pay for it, then it's very easy but if not, you just need longer to restore your apps.

Once backed up and ready with your ROM.zip on SD card, boot into clockworkmod recovery.
These are the things which I wipe and always makes things 'bug' free to me.

• Under advanced:
  • Dalvik cache
• Under mount and storage:
  • Format /system
  • Format /cache
  • Format /data
  • Format /boot
  • If you want to clean your external partition on SD card too, ONLY then format /sd-ext
• Under main menu
  • wipe user data 
  • wipe cache

Most of us already know about dalvik, cache and data - but wiping under mount and storage seems to help me.

It's not generally needed if you switch from one version to another of the same ROM, but if you want to have a bug free life, please back up everything and wipe everything as above and then make a 'fresh' install.

No matter where your phone is from, what hardware, what RAM or what camera - if you've cleaned as above and you still see the bugs, then they are real! (unless ofcourse -any particular apps mess up!)