Reformatting: How often?

Black Swan

How often to you reformat your HD? I have a friend that does his as a matter of routine about once a year to clean out all the garbage that may accumulate, whereas I have another friend that only reformats if he has to (or never, if he can avoid it). What's your practice and why?

I avoid reformatting if I can, but frequently disk clean (MS disk cleaner and ccleaner) and defrag about once a month. Comments or other suggestions?

Ghost Train

might do a fresh install of a machine once or twice a year in which case I'll stick in a new drive or format part of an existing drive

formatting only really good for wiping away junk, a defrag would be the normal thing to do to improve disk performance (which reading your post again, you do)

i save files in random folders so cleaning up is tricky, plus i collect all sorts of stuff and hate wiping stuff, incase I might need it again

jor el

I don't re-format very often, but I do re-install and overwrite the existing Windows install about once a year or so. It's good to clear Windows out, but wiping the disk is a bitch as you have to move everything around and restore backups afterward.

Overheal

Since the new laptop has a recovery drive and a nice automatic recovery utility I've seen fit to recover it about 3 times since I got it in august. Just as a matter of Overkill I guess; usually when the computer starts acting weird, the drive is getting full of junk files, etc.

I keep 2 external drives: one for mass media and installers and another for whatever, so its a snap to re-install programs and throw my music back on. Anytime I watch a movie etc. I usually just do it right off the external.

FruitLover

Only when I change HD.

This must be a Windows thing??

unnameduser

Anyone who is reinstalling on a regular basis should be using ghosting software. It takes the pain out of reinstalling.

I have my O.S. partitioned to itself and backup to my 500GB HD weekly.

My main problem is that I am constantly trying out new software and when it goes belly up sometimes the only solution is reinstall.

There is lots of nice maintenance software out there that will help keep an O.S. squeeky clean.

Standard Toaster

I'll only format my desktop when I have too. New OS or new Harddive/machine.
Any testing I do I do inside virtual machines which I can trash when I'm done.
Right click/clone and I have a new one in 3mins

I browse the net inside a read-only VM too. Formatting once a year is over kill I think but some people enjoy doing it.

The laptop gets blasted from time to time though

Black Swan

The_Edge wrote: »

I browse the net inside a read-only VM too.

Do you have a user-friendly source to set up a VM on Windows Vista that you can share?

Capt'n Midnight

setup two partitions on your hard drive
c: is where windows lives
is for your data and program files and stuff

you can wipe / re-image c; whenever you want and when you install the programs again they should inherit some of their previous settings

Standard Toaster

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

Do you have a user-friendly source to set up a VM on Windows Vista that you can share?

Grab VMware player (free)
Grab this Virtual Appliance (free)

I personally use VMware Workstation and my own XP image.
Allows me to create a snapshot of the image and revert back if I want to test/install something.

There's hundreds of Virtual Appliances you can get....most for free.

Design_Dude

I have my hard drive partition in three, one for linux, windows and then all my files. I format and reinstall windows a couple of times a year prob.

Daemonic

As rarely as is possible. My current install is like a comfy old armchair at this stage. It's on a dedicated 80gb drive so since the initial install to that drive I've changed mobo once due to one dying and then completed a full upgrade with a second new mobo and processor. I'm sure there's tons of junk drivers and crap on there but I never have any problems so I just defrag and backup regularly and hope for the best.

Khannie

When I used windows I wiped it less and less frequently as time went by. Lessons learned etc. Not sure how long I've had this linux install, but I've no intention of ever formatting. Seriously. Never.

DonkeyStyle \o/

I reformat every 30 days so I can keep using all my trial programs. :pac:


Seriously though, when ever it needs it.

Ghost Train

The_Edge wrote: »

Grab VMware player (free)
Grab this Virtual Appliance (free)

I personally use VMware Workstation and my own XP image.
Allows me to create a snapshot of the image and revert back if I want to test/install something.

There's hundreds of Virtual Appliances you can get....most for free.

vmware server can be downloaded free too

and can be used to set up virtual machines

I never reinstalled the OS on my current desktop PC, I built it and installed XP Pro on 8th of July last year. Can't remember the last time I reinstalled on my laptop but must be a year and a half at least (the help system in XP tells you when you last installed it). I used to reinstall if I came across a strange problem but as time went on I learned how to fix them rather than having to install everything all over again.

On my own machines I partition my disk and save my personal data to the second partition. I also have a batch file I use to back up the files which have to stay on the OS drive such as e-mail messages and browser favourites. That way I can zap the OS partition and I've lost nothing.

kaimera

Back on my xp lappy, every few months or so but I did have it partitioned nicely.

Changed back to a single drive for my vista lappy after I formatted and installed x64 on it. No intentions of formatting for the foreseeable future.

Master-Geek

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

How often to you reformat your HD? I have a friend that does his as a matter of routine about once a year to clean out all the garbage that may accumulate, whereas I have another friend that only reformats if he has to (or never, if he can avoid it). What's your practice and why?

I avoid reformatting if I can, but frequently disk clean (MS disk cleaner and ccleaner) and defrag about once a month. Comments or other suggestions?

Depending on file fragmentation, it would be evaluated upon that. You also have to think about the systems registry, and de-frag that too.

Alot of programs will leave behind values and keys that are of no use, and that can cause clustering. Certain keys and values would be trial entries for trial-ware programs, and badly programmed system applications.

De-frag your hard drive when ever there is a large write to the discs, and the same for the systems registry.

Windows defrag is useless in my terms, Diskeeper is a very powerful de-fragger.

Civilian_Target

I used to reformat at least once a year.
Now I know enough about the services system, defragging, memory management, blah blah, and have enough money to buy new hard disks when I run of space, so I haven't reformatted since 2005. And I haven't cleaned my disks out in at least a year.