Moving a MySQL installation?

[Don Levey]

I'm upgrading a home machine, which in practice involves simply building 
a new machine and moving things over to the bigger, faster box.  Not 
being much of a MySQL person, but using it as the back end of a number 
of things (Gallery2, Amarok, and others), I find myself needing to move 
the old data to the new machine or recreate it.  I envision three 
possibilities, in decreasing levels of desirability:

1) Take the data files and move them wholesale to the new machine.  If 
this is possible, everything comes over at once and when I start sqld 
everything "just works".

2) Export all the databases, and import them on the new machine.  This 
too should work, but seems a little more time/effort-intensive.  I don't 
know off-hand how to do that, but I'm sure instructions are out there so 
I'm not worried if it comes to that.

3) Start fresh and recreate everything.  Least desirable - would mean 
I'd have to figure out how I did everything and do it again.

If #1 is a possibility, what files should I move over?

Thanks in advance,
  -Don

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