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How often do you format?

E

effee

Golden Member
I usually format about every 2 months or so. Usually because I've found some virus that managed to slip past my AV and firewall. Some of them can be pretty slippery and I'm using Kaspersky and Zone Alarm. I usually burn my data that I want to save to cds and after the format reinstall them back, usually my mp3 collection. Anyway, how often do you guys reformat?
 
i typically end up reformatting at least twice a year. i have a lot of apps installed, especially games and the like, i hate reinstalling all of them. but once in a while, i will fsck up windows and decide it would be best to reformat instead of fix it, even though i know it would save time to fix it
 
I format about 2 or 3 times a year. It is usually when I get a new piece of hardware.

But, I restore windows once every few weeks sometimes. I try many utilities that I download and sometimes I don't like one and I don't want to spend time figuring out how to get rid of all of its components. So, I just restore windows. I have even disabled windows restore since I don't need it.

I have all my programs on a separate partition. I also have my IE favorites and my emails and my address book and my entire "My Documents" folder on that other partition. I use Drive Image to restore the OS partition and it takes only 3 minutes. The image is created after I installed my favorite programs. So, after restore, I will not have to re-install many programs. May be 2 or 3.
 
Twice a year maybe - although I try to do it as little as possible. I went almost a year but had to reformat a couple weeks ago after buying a new cpu :frown:
 
My gaming rig tends to be formatted 2 to 4 times a year.

Office rigs, only when there's a major hardware upgrade (less than once a year, maybe once every two or three years).
 
When I was using Win95/98, several times a year. Often enough that I wrote a check list to ensure that I backed up everything that I needed and installed all the drivers/etc in the proper order to ensure that everything would be optimal at the start. My current XP install is going on 18 months (and this includes a video card upgrade), without any problems at all. System does not exhibit any kind of slowdown.

I would do another install if I did a major hardware upgrade, but quite frankly it hasn't been worth it. My last upgrade I doubled my processor speed to 3 GHz. Processor speed has stagnated since. Not sure when I will feel the need to upgrade again.
 
only when i update my pc, hardware wise

thats about it.. if it was non winxp it would be 2-4times a yr
 
I do my gaming machine about twice a year. I havn't done my laptop yet, that I have had for a little over a year though I don't really tweak it much so it doesn't get screwed up really.
 
Only when you get a New computer and have to install a new License of Windows.

Otherwise Keep an Image (TrueImage, or Ghost) and reload when necessary.

You can keep the image span on CD/DVD, both programs provide a Boot CD to start the loading to the Hard Drive from the CD ROM. The Drive Can be Old, New, Formatted, Not Formatted, what ever it will load the image.

If some one can effort to reformat often it tells me that he might have a lot of information files but otherwise rather simple system. It would take me few days to install all the programs, and customize my system to current functioning if I reformat and do the default installation.

With image Ghosting it take 10-40 min.(depending on the size of the drive) + adjusting what ever changes I did since the last stored image,

:sun:
 
It takes me a day to reinstall everytime after a format. No idea you guys reformatted so few times..😱 I think i'm the minority. I'm paranoid about my system, everything must be squeaky clean and running with no conflicts and viruses, hence the often formats
 
It seems like every few weeks recently damnit.

I blame it all on VIA.


Usually only a few times a year; i prefer to re-image though whenever possible.
 
Originally posted by: JackMDS
Only when you get a New computer and have to install a new License of Windows.

Otherwise Keep an Image (TrueImage, or Ghost) and reload when necessary.

You can keep the image span on CD/DVD, both programs provide a Boot CD to start the loading to the Hard Drive from the CD ROM. The Drive Can be Old, New, Formatted, Not Formatted, what ever it will load the image.

If some one can effort to reformat often it tells me that he might have a lot of information files but otherwise rather simple system. It would take me few days to install all the programs, and customize my system to current functioning if I reformat and do the default installation.

With image Ghosting it take 10-40 min.(depending on the size of the drive) + adjusting what ever changes I did since the last stored image,

:sun:
Click to expand...

Only problem with this is assuming that none of the hardware has changed since your ghost or image.
Anyone have suggestions around that?> That's the only reason why I gave up using imaging software.



 
I'm using the same installation of Windows XP Pro for the past 2 years and it's still working really well. I think it's time I get some new hardware. 😉
 
For the past two years up until about 2 months ago, it was once a year. From two months ago until now, it's been a total of 5 times. There's something about my computer that SP2 does not seem to like... it'll work fine for the first few days to a week, then start giving me all sorts of errors, then gets my computer running so screwy that the only way to fix it (System Restore does nothing to help this) is to reinstall Windows. I've gotten to the point of annoyance to where I've gotten all the important security updates for SP1 installed (I just finished yet ANOTHER reinstall about 4 hours ago), and I'm just going to wait until I basically have to have SP2 before I install it again. I'm also going to pay the money and finally get a drive image creator so I can have a backup of my current set-up in case SP2 decides it doesn't like me again.
 
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