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Just reformatted my computer and it's a great feeling!

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Deleted member 4644

It has been near two years since I have fully reformatted my computer, and it feels great. I have become a considerably more organized person in the last two years, so I am looking forward to my new system of organization.

It also feels great how snappy it is, and actually having more than 3 GB of free space on my SSD!

🙂
 
Always a nice feeling after a fresh install. Was even more awesome when I did the switch to Linux. Everything is so insane fast, it's awesome. I don't wait for anything at all. Ok, certain apps like Gimp might take a few seconds to load, but that's about it. And even after running it for a long time it's as fast as it was when I first installed it. I find Windows tends to slow down over time. At least <=XP did. I can't really talk about Vista/7/8 as I have not used those long enough. We have 7 on our church computer and it's just as fast as it was when it was installed, so I'd say they did improve a lot in that department. I think the issue is Windows tends to generate data that does not get cleaned up so those processes just get slow as these files grow. Also explains why windows' disk usage grows over time even without installing anything.
 
Nothing like having a clean and customized OS snapshot that you can restore at a moment's notice 🙂

I throw in a secure erase of my SSDs every few months for good measure.
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
Nothing like having a clean and customized OS snapshot that you can restore at a moment's notice 🙂

I throw in a secure erase of my SSDs every few months for good measure.
Click to expand...

How does that work?

I have so many programs on my computer (including adobe creative suite) that it would be discs of stuff.

I always thought myself smart because I have win7, which seems to make it easy and 4 hard drives. I only reformat :C and keep music and videos, downloads, everything on the other drives but it still takes me like 12 hours to fully load up and update my C drive. PITA.
 
Northern Lawn said:
How does that work?

I have so many programs on my computer (including adobe creative suite) that it would be discs of stuff.

I always thought myself smart because I have win7, which seems to make it easy and 4 hard drives. I only reformat :C and keep music and videos, downloads, everything on the other drives but it still takes me like 12 hours to fully load up and update my C drive. PITA.
Click to expand...

Backup an image of your C: drive with all programs installed.

Just save the image on another hard drive.
 
Used to reformat regularly but now I've been on the same installation since Win7 came out in 2009. Works great so far and you always learn something when you have to actually fix a problem instead of nuking the whole installation and hope it will go away.
 
Northern Lawn said:
How does that work?

I have so many programs on my computer (including adobe creative suite) that it would be discs of stuff.

I always thought myself smart because I have win7, which seems to make it easy and 4 hard drives. I only reformat :C and keep music and videos, downloads, everything on the other drives but it still takes me like 12 hours to fully load up and update my C drive. PITA.
Click to expand...
Do a clean OS install with all your apps, utils and customizations (I'm anal that way - every last preference is set to what I like), then image the whole shebang with something like TrueImage.
It's nice to not have to worry when you want to tinker (eg. trying out a couple of versions of Catalyst, new app, etc.)
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
Do a clean OS install with all your apps, utils and customizations (I'm anal that way - every last preference is set to what I like), then image the whole shebang with something like TrueImage.
It's nice to not have to worry when you want to tinker (eg. trying out a couple of versions of Catalyst, new app, etc.)
Click to expand...

Yep, this keeps me from reinstalling OS's as I hate having to get things set back up. Tempted to image my comp as is, just not too sure how it would be with two raided ssds. Never imaged a raided comp before.

If you wanna talk fast, try a Ubuntu 12.04 with proper ext4 install on an ssd...its soooo fast 😎
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
Do a clean OS install with all your apps, utils and customizations (I'm anal that way - every last preference is set to what I like), then image the whole shebang with something like TrueImage.
It's nice to not have to worry when you want to tinker (eg. trying out a couple of versions of Catalyst, new app, etc.)
Click to expand...
Yep, this is what i do also.
I install all my programs and windows updates.
Everything but video drivers, then create an image and name it CleanAll.tib.
takes like 7min to do a restore to my clean image when i want.
I dont include video drivers, because they are always being updated, and a clean OS install with no video drivers comes in real handy when troubleshooting and/or upgrading my video card.

Once a month or so, i create an image of my pc as it is now, and name it NOW.tib, then restore my CleanAll.tib image and install whatever windows updates that have come out to keep my clean image up to date.
Then restore my NOW image and move on.

This method forces you to stay organized, and keep all your important data that you want backed up on drive d: or external drive

I use my SSD as drive c: (my OS)
And install all my games to my larger mechanical drive D and moved My Documents to D also, so i dont have to manually backup my saved games when restoring c: (well most of the times, some games still save in odd locations and i have to backup the saves b4 an image restore)
And who cares if the games take a few seconds longer to load from my HDD over my SSD, I still get load times so fast I cannot read the "tips" in Skyrim during loads. (LOL)

Note: You must have a separate drive or partition other than your OS drive you are imaging to make and store an image.
Otherwise the image would over-write itself when you restore the imaged partition.
 
XP made me feel like I needed to do it every year or so and I did. With Vista I haven't had to do it once even though I do install/uninstall lots of programs. Or maybe CCleaner is doing it's magic.

My Vista 64 original install date (via systeminfo): 1/16/2009 ... almost 4 years now.
 
I have a system with Windows 7 original install July 2009. Still "fast" with no disastrous virus/malware infecting it.
 
robphelan said:
i swear i'm going to start doing this one of these days..
Click to expand...
Believe me, once you do, you'll tell everyone you know who has a pc why the HAVE to do it.
With modern SSD's i swear it takes literally 7 min to restore a clean install of your OS.

Send me a virus, i'll ibe back at the desktop in 7min laughing like it never happened. :biggrin:
And even on a mechanical hard drive (7200rpm) it still only takes me around 13min to restore my "clean image".

I image every pc i build for friends so they can restore the pc to its original state it was in the the day i built it for them.
Saves me and them a lot of headaches and time.
 
I was just given a fairly new laptop. I was told it was "broken" by the relative who gave it to me & was convinced it was the hard drive. I spent a couple hours trying to figure out what the problem is, and have concluded that I simply need to reinstall windows. I spent 5 hours attempting to back it up from the set of disks he created to back it up, only to discover that he made those disks AFTER he was having trouble. (Rather than when the thing was new.) So, I have no disks to install windows from scratch. *sigh* I don't have the license number for the OEM version that was originally installed. *sigh*

I agree with others - my computer: OS in one partition, image in another partition, everything saved (pictures, etc.) in yet another. Simply back up one partition on the HD to the other partition. It takes minutes, followed by running all the necessary updates to the OS & other software.
 
MTDEW said:
Believe me, once you do, you'll tell everyone you know who has a pc why the HAVE to do it.
With modern SSD's i swear it takes literally 7 min to restore a clean install of your OS.
Click to expand...

Reinstalling windows was a lengthy process.
XP = 20 min
Win7 - 15 min

So even with SSD and 7 min, not a big difference. 10 extra min won't kill me.

But it's NEVER as easy as that. Backing everything up (especially games) and reconfiguring your PC/reinstalling all the apps/games etc is what's time consuming.
 
I just installed an ssd and Windows 8. My videos player better and for some reason my pings are lower on COD4. Machine boots way faster and search is way faster.
 
Doing this soon, going to be backing up about 300-400gb of info, got a new 160gb Intel SSD I'm going to throw Ubuntu on. Ditching Windows as my main OS, will use a VM through Xen or dual boot to keep my access to games and their ecosystem. I like Windows, I'm not ditching it for any other reason than to give myself a change of pace.
 
Some quick tips if you do do this.
Things to be sure you add to your "clean install" to save you time, so you're ready to go when restoring the image.
This is from my own "reminder" list. (so your list will be different)
Make a list of what programs YOU wanna make sure you have installed and setup for you when you restore your "clean image"

First all windows updates and of course a complete virus scan to ensure your image is "clean" after installing all software.
And the latest drivers for your motherboard etc... (i exclude video drivers, so i have a clean windows install which never had any video drivers installed to ensure a clean install of latest video drivers when restoring image.)

And Antivirus software you use should go on ASAP so you have the definitions as up to date as possible to scan b4 making the image..

1: Winrar / 7zip
2: Image burning software...like Image burn , nero or whatever you use.
3: Video Lan
4: Adobe Flash
5: Your web browser
6: Favorites or Bookmarks for your browser (be sure to copy/paste any updated bookmarks to your "backup drive and overwrite if you add to the list so you can copy/paste them back easily upon restore)
7: MS Office
8: DVD Shrink (yep i still use it)
9: Setup your email programs if you run any.
10: Any video conversion software you may use like ConvertX or Nero or whatever.
11: Make sure the wallpaper you used is copy/pasted to drive c and set as wallpaper from the file on drive c , so when you restore your image, it is included in the image. (same goes with any custom sound files, like "you've got mail" you may use)
12: Do a disk cleanup b4 making image, but if you want username and/or passwords included for your favorite sites, be sure to exclude those.
13: Be sure and have your browser homepages set
14: Your favorite PDF reader
15: Daemon tools (if you use it to mount images)
16:Quick-par (if you don't know what it is, then forget it)
17: Any utilities you use such as CPUZ, GPUZ, Prime 95, HD Tune, Intel burn etc...etc.. (including benchmarks, if you want those too)
18: Any browser plugins you use. (such as Adblock plus , aniweather...etc..)
19: Quicktime (if you feel you need it, i HATE it)
20: Any SSD tools such as Intel SSD toolbox and SSD life etc...

Make a list, and then install it all, THEN do a disk cleanup and virus scan Before imaging it.
If its your first time, no doubt, you'll remember a program as soon as you start making the image..LOL
That is ok, let the image finish and add it afterwards, then make a new image. (don't forget to virus scan again)
 
Vdubchaos said:
Reinstalling windows was a lengthy process.
XP = 20 min
Win7 - 15 min

So even with SSD and 7 min, not a big difference. 10 extra min won't kill me.

But it's NEVER as easy as that. Backing everything up (especially games) and reconfiguring your PC/reinstalling all the apps/games etc is what's time consuming.
Click to expand...
Not really, include all your "needed" APPs in your image it is definitely a time saver, and yes, you have to re-install games, but you just copy/paste the save games back.
(no way you can install Win7, all updates and all your apps installed and setup in 15min)

It is worth it, to ensure a "clean OS" and all APPS ready to go ,and really isnt that time consuming once you get it all organized and do it a few times.
And you only have to do it all once. (after that just updates)
Then restoring the "complete Clean image" is way faster.


I personally, never really have more than 4 or so games installed at a time anyway. (and i dont want them included in my "clean image" because games come and go as i finish them)
 
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I can't remember the last time I reinstalled my computer because I thought it might make it go faster. Maybe in the Win98 era? Any time since has been due to other reasons (upgrades / me messing around with Windows), and even in those scenarios I can't remember ever thinking "this is noticeably faster" afterwards.

Even in the Win98 era I dual-booted Win98 and NT4, so I doubt I reinstalled then very often either.

My current PC build has had a Win7 installation since April-June 2010 and feels just as snappy as the day I set it up.
 
I always wanted to use a disk image for backup but i do not reinstall my OS very often so by the time I want to reisntall my apps are all outdated and I think it is better to just reintall windows and install clean of the lastest versions of software.
 
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