formatting hard drive

how often should i format, is it like defragging a hd

 

You've posted this question in the wrong forum, I'm afraid. Mods please move to Computer Hardware.

If this helps you should only format your hard drive If you have a serious problem with your PC, (ie virus infection, PC not booting up or frequently crashing) or you want to upgrade your operating system.

 

Mooooving to Computer Forum

 

Some friends reformat thier drives regularly, 2 or 3 times a year.Only takes a couple of hours and your back to a nice quick pc with no crap in the drives.

 

On the other hand, my PC at work has had NT4 on it for at least 5 years without a reinstall!

However, I tend to average two reinstalls a year, although my WinME HCPC has been going just over a year without a reinstall (touch wood!).

NT based OS's (NT, 2000, XP) tend to need less reinstalls than Win9x based ones (95, 98, ME).

 

because I do so much mucking about with software, I tend to rebuild my PC every couple of months. Saying that, I haven't rebuilt this one for about six months.

Policy I work by is:

House keep - defrag & get rid of the old crud you really don't need (demos etc)

run regular systems checks.

If it ain't broke don't fix it!

Collin

 

Well im a bad example, but i have 2 machines, the hcpc has had xp re imstalled half a dozen times in 6 months, my working mucking about, surfing, nonsense machine has had ME running on it without serious hitch for nearly 3 years.

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Reinstalling ain't reformatting though, is it ?

 

well its not exactly easy to reformat your system partition without reinstalling! I basically took it as read that you would automatically reformat anytime you reinstalled

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You can also reinstall over the os which was how i read you.

 

does that not leave you with a confusing mess?

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Nah. You can do this to repair lost/damaged system files, .dll's etc.

 

Lynx,

Thats fair enough, i think we know what we both were on about!

But to the topic...... dkapit8, was there any specific problem you are trying to sort that prompted you to ask?

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