Reformatting mac drive... what about plug ins?

[seenky]

Hi Folks

Stupid question time... I've encountered the dreaded red text of doom whilst attempting to repair my macs hard drive with disk utility. Reformatting is the suggested solution - I've never done this before and whilst it seems relatively straight forward I just wanted to check what's involved in relation to plug ins/DAW post-reformatting? I know about creating a time machine back up of my files and reinstalling Yosemite from an external drive but I'm not sure if I'm better just saving the important stuff and doing a full clear out on the rest.

If I stick with the time machine option there'll be no need to reinstall/reauthorise all my plug ins, correct? I suppose my main question is if it's possible to copy all my plug in files onto an external drive and simply drop them back on to the reformatted mac? i.e. not having to do a full time machine reboot. Does that make sense?

Apologies in advance - me no do tech speak very well, so idiot terminology is welcomed!