Poll: how often do you format ?

[borealiss]

poll? where's the poll!? :frown:

usually when i reinstall an os, i just delete the windows directory, so i'm going on 13 or more months.

 

[KarlHungus]

<< If one is careful about keeping their system clean, there is absolutely no reason to format every Full Moon like some people that have already posted believe. >>

Hehe, some of us don't like to slog through the registry looking for whatever settings that last beta program messed up. Then again, that's why I have two drives... There's no problem formatting my 2 Gig system drive occassionally. I'm running Win98SE and probably format it once every 6 months to a year depending on stability. The last time I reformatted any data drive was a couple years ago when switching from FAT16 to FAT32.

 

[Oyeve]

<< Oyeve don't know if you are being saracastic or not, but that's when you wipe your harddrive clean... (by the way, your rig id ain't working). >>



I was being sarcastic! BTW, I got my rig up again. I forgot to change the ID.

Anyway, I havent formatted in years. My system contains all UW2 scsi drives and only when I add a new drive to my ever growing chain do I format(just the new dirve). I do, however, run defrag once a week. I think that will keep a system nice and healthy. Plus being that I have over 180 gigs, regular formats would be a bitch. Backing up takes hours and restoring takes more hours. Geez, the defrag takes hours sometime, depending what I added/deleted during the week. Cant wait for super fast optical drives.

 

[(M)]

Windows 2000 - when a hardware change is made (or 6 months).
Windows ME - once a quarter - to maintain rock-solid stability

 

[GTaudiophile]

I try to every 6 months or so (Win98).

 

[Yoshi]

Since installing Win2K, never! A lifetime of experiance with PC's, 20 or so years.

 

[Noriaki]

<< What do you people use your computers for that you can just reformat and not miss any of the data you just destoryed? >>

Do you not know what a data partition is? I have these little things on my hard drives called partitions, I only format my main OS partition. I haven't formatted my data partitions in years, when I upgrade a hard drive my data partition contents get copied over intact.

Edit: And lets not bring up the &quot;one big FAT32 vs parititioning&quot; argument...maybe you like one big drive, but us biweekly formatters don't. Besides that arguments been beaten to death more often than most 16 year old boys masterbate.

If you drag your OS through a bunch of hardware upgrades you have all kinds of old drivers around, slowing down and clogging up your system especially in Win9x. Maybe you don't care about this slow down...that's fine, good for you be happy with your system.

In this crowd we are talking about people that WILL WATER COOL THEIR CPUs to get every ounce of performance out of them. Ok...mabye we aren't all that extreme...but something simple like re-installing windows to get a little performance hardly seems extreme compared to using a car rear window defogger kit to connect the L1 bridges on your Duron so you can overclock it more does it?

It's all about performance tweaks, maybe you don't care or notice that your system is being slowed down by all the loose ends Win9x leaves after years of solid running, and maybe you don't care at all. Many of us do. And more-over I just don't like junk on my hard drives, 75Gigs or not, I like my drives organized and there's really not an easier way to clean up a messy C: than a nice format + re-install. Again maybe this isn't something you notice/care about.

Different strokes for different folks as they say. Lets not go off thinking you're all better than the rest of us because you don't format.

 

[Wuming]

whenever windows starts becoming sluggish and slow, or whenever i feel like it!

 

[Dufusyte]

If folk are concerned about performance, they would not be running a bloated OS such as Win2K or any Windows that has the IE shell: these systems sap off considerable resources simply to stay afloat.

Long live OSR2!

I think I get an extra 10 fps in most games simply because of my OS.

 

[Noriaki]

<< If folk are concerned about performance, they would not be running a bloated OS such as Win2K or any Windows that has the IE shell: these systems sap off considerable resources simply to stay afloat.

Long live OSR2! >>



You don't honestly think that Win95 OSR2 is a better OS than Win2000Pro, do you?

Win95 OSR2 better than Win98...yes I can agree with that. I found the USB support in Win95 even OSR2.1 to be a little weak so I had to upgrade to Win98. I actually wasn't very happy about that...I used Win95 OSR 2.1 until summer of 99. <edit> Oh and Windows ME is an unmitigated piece of garbage...I put that in a league with Win3.11 and MacOS </edit>

But if you think for half a second that any souped up DOS shell (which Win95, 98 and ME all are) can come anywhere near a true 32-bit OS (Windows NT) then you seriously need to reconsider your knowledge of operating systems....I'll admit...Windows 2000 uses a fair bit of RAM...but at least it uses it well, and doesn't leak memory all over the place.

I'm not trying to be insulting here...but to compare any Win9x core to Windows 2000 is a little silly....if you want to argue legacy compatibily and what not that's fine, there's a reason Windows NT isn't in the consumer market yet....but just on power, flexability, reliability, and even speed (as nVidia's newest Win2k drivers show) Windows NT dominates Win9x.

Of course I'm not trying to convince you to move to NT...it is kind of expensive, and if you are happy with Win9x, that's good then And as long as you don't run into USB troubles, Win95 OSR2.1 is the best of the lot really. Microsoft does have a habit of adding a bunch of &quot;features&quot; no one really wants. In fact I'd probably Run WinNT4.0 Workstation except that the game support is really weak, so it's NT5.0 Workstation (2000 Pro) for me.

 

[Vinny N]

Usually 2 or 3 days after getting new hardware.

Or weekly when I hit a &quot;this operating system isn't good enough for me!&quot; craze...during which it'd be normal for me to have only BeOS, only Linux, or only Windows 9x, or only Windows NT4, or only Windows 2000 on my computer at a given time during the week, and in the worse case, at a given time during the day...

The longest I'll wait is 6 months or when I get new hardware, whichever is shorter

In some unforeseen future in which I am happy with my OS I will never ever ever reformat and reinstall on threat of death

I keep all my data and goodies on a separate physical hard drive, so I never miss it at all when I wipe my main physical hard drive.

 

[ToBeMe]

Every 6 months to a year, if they make it a year, I do it anyway! I'm thinking Win2K &amp; WinME may make it longer...especially 2K but both are, and have been running excellent since installation.....I have more problems with Linux &amp; BeOS!

 

[Raincity]

Does reformatting two many times cause the drive to loose some of its life span or will the data become corrupt faster on a drive that has been formated on a weekly basis ?

Rain

 

[Dufusyte]

On the OSR2 vs Win2K issue, here is my take:

When you make an OS, there are always trade-offs, and so you have to decide who your target market is, and design the OS with that target in mind. The NT kernel is designed with the corporate market in mind, and hence it emphasizes stability and security. It does so at the cost of raw speed, and multimedia compatability. Moreover, it hogs massive amounts of ram just to stay afloat. It also is less compatable with games than the Win9x kernel. Thus, if you are a corporate customer who is concerned primarily with stability and security, and nor concerned about dedicating a sizeable chunk of your ram simply to keep the OS afloat, and you do not require the widest possible gaming compatability, then the NT kernel is your best OS.

However, if you are a gamer, you will find that the 9x kernel is a better OS, for all the reasons mentioned above: wider game compatability, less resources hogged by the OS (which is especially important for gamers, since games themselves often require massive amounts of ram for optimal performance), and, if you run without the bloated IE shell, you will experience greater performance overall, since less system resources are being sapped by the shell.

As a gamer, I am not interested in having USB devices, since USB saps off cpu cycles by its very nature.

The truth is, DOS is a better gaming OS that Windows, but the reason that DOS is not the best OS for a gamer is the fact that the latest games do not run in DOS, therefore the DOS Gamer will find that he does not have a wide variety of games to run. Therefore, all things considered, OSR2 is the best gaming OS: high performance, plus widest game availability.

btw, I find OSR2 to be very stable, even on my overclocked Thunderbird 800@856. The only time I can guarantee a crash is if I over-multi-task the IDE channels, by, say, downloading 10 mp3's simultaneously while playing another mp3 at 256bit quality: the multiple writes and intensive reads over-tax the ide channel.

People are finally begining to realize (especially with WinME) that the &quot;latest&quot; product from MS is not necessarily the best (Media Player 7 anyone?). The 9x kernel hit its peak with OSR2. As for NT/2K, it is targetted for a different market segment, and is not the optimal gaming OS, nor was it ever intended to be.

 

[Budman]

I usually do it once a month.
It keeps things nice &amp; fast.

 

[IRISH4LIFE]

Once when switching over to Win ME. Not one problem since.

 

[Taz4158]

Every 2 or 3 months.

 

[BaNdiTmaN]

There is just something about having things clean and organized, so I do it every 6 months or so. It reminds me how much fun it is to setup my computer from scratch, which is what got me started with computers.

 

[NutBucket]

too often. Nuff said.

 

[Silverbullet28]

I reformat about once every two months, seems to run better when I reformat often.

- Silver

 

[BIGGDOG]

About every other week wit5h windows 98 SE
Never with windows 2000

 

[Noriaki]

<< It does so at the cost of raw speed, and multimedia compatability >>



<< However, if you are a gamer, you will find that the 9x kernel is a better OS, for all the reasons mentioned above: wider game compatability, less resources hogged by the OS (which is especially important for gamers, since games themselves often require massive amounts of ram for optimal performance), and, if you run without the bloated IE shell, you will experience greater performance overall, since less system resources are being sapped by the shell. >>

I have to disagree with this.
If you look at the driver comparisions for Win2k vs Win9x you will see that the difference in performance is negligable....in some cases Win2k wins by a slight margin. I use Win2k as my only OS on my home PC, the main thing I use my PC for is gaming. I have had no troubles with game compatibility or any other &quot;multimedia&quot; app. If you would look at the speed you will see that Win2000 keeps up quite nicely to Win95. I'm not sure where you get the problem with the &quot;bloated IE shell&quot;, you are probably right it is somewhat bloated, but when you are gaming it's not in use, so if you run out of RAM the IE stuff will get paged out to virtual memory....so it won't really affect your gaming performance.
You are right, Win2000 uses a fair bit of RAM, but I ran it quite happily with 128MB. More would have been nicer...but that is the only major drawback...but you have to consider when Win95 was made, the standard RAM size in a new PC was 8-16MB, now the standard ram size in a new PC is 128-256MB. Maybe 64MB in a lowend new PC...but Win2000 is to expensive to be considered for a low end system anyways.

Just for fun take a look at this thread, it's a poll someone started about which OS we prefer for gaming, win9x vs win2000, and you'll see it's pretty even. 45vs34 in favour of Win2k, many gamers prefer Win2000, and it's really not a big performance loss if you use new good drivers.

 

[MassMhz]

Pass me the aspirin ! I format every time i get a day off work,or install a new motherboard,wichever comes first.

 

[jagr10]

About once every 2 months. SOmething always screws up and forces me to reformat. I'm using WinME. Maybe that's why (he he).

 

[Jal]

Once a year.
When the official SP2 comes out for Win2k, I will wipe and install.
Keeps things nice n clean