Format or not too?

[Jase03]

Sorry placed this in the wrong topic....pasted it in the General hardware...My orginial question was, should you format your HD when replacing your mobo??...


Starting to build my new PC... changing everything except for my WD 160 Hard drive. My old computer is/was so bad I'm not going to list it...lol

Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra Athlon 64(FX) Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ Processor (San Diego) Socket 939
eVGA GeForce 6800 GS CO SE 256MB PCIe
Antec Sonata II Quiet Super Mid Tower Case (Piano Black) w/450W Power Supply
Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2 2GB Kit DDR400 XMS3200 Memory w/Black Heat Spreader

I not plan to overclock anything at 1st, just want to have a successful 1st build.
How important is it to format the hard drive...and go with a clean start on everything. I most likely will format it; I just wondering if I chose not too, would I have problems...

Thanks for the any advice, long time troller, all the thread here have help my PC knowledge grow. Thanks to all. Really love this site you guys do an awesome job!

Any other advise would help too with any of the items....

 

[iRONic]

I always do. A fresh OS just feels like it boots faster.

Some prefer not to.

 

[blackstealth007]

i would. When you get a new mobo, you have new drivers and the old drivers and programs on the hard drive could conflict and have problems with the new one. Reformatting also gets rid of virus and spam that you missed thus reformatting could cause a noticeable increase in performance. If you have stuff you want to keep, save it though. :thumbsup: Hope you enjoy your new motherboard

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

Sorry to tell you, if you already bought the ASUS, but I hate my board. I lost the NB fan like 3 times and got hosed on several BIOS updates. I'm running a 3200+ but roughly the same config. I just loaded (installed a new bios chip after the last fry) and it has BIOS 1010 loaded on it. I've had issues with the board not going into sleep mode and not rebooting properly. It's hard to troubleshoot that type of issue, but I saw that the 1011 BIOS fixed some sleep related issues...(that, but the way is how I fried my earlier BIOS....trying to go to 1011). Anyway. I have a RAID set as boot and a could of other HD devices for storage. One thing about 1010 I noticed is that the when I set the SATA for RAID and IDE for non-RAID, that I couldn't move around the boot order in the Harddrive setting of the bios...so the system wanted to boot from my WD drive and not the RAID set. The only way I could fix it was to back out to the 1008 BIOS....By the way, I have since figured out a work around for the boot order. Basically you need to turn RAID on all devices, reboot (for setting to reflect in the BIOS), then change boot order...RAID should be the only one listed...since the other devices are not configured (don't configure them)...then reboot...go back into the BIOS...turn off RAID on the IDE drives...reboot....go back in and RAID will be the first to boot, then the others....of course you won't be able to change the order...but at least the right device will boot.

I would check the S2/S3 sleep modes after you install to make sure that they are functioning...if you use them that is.

 

[Jase03]

I'm thinking I'm going to format and start with a nice clean plate.

iRONic / Bstealth007, Thanks you sold me on the formatting, removing all the hidden spams is a plus...!

Cr0nj0b, man that sucks..I'm not using RAID so hopefully I won't have all the problems you've have. Fingers crossed!

My CPU/Mobo will be here today, Ram tomorrow..Video card not till the 4th...:| Dang it!