Poll: Why in sam hell are people so afraid to format??

[chemos]

I'm one of those firm believers in formatting, at least every other month or so. It makes me ill to see a computer which hasn't been formatted in years. My boss at my last job REFUSED to let me format her drive. Her computer hasn't been formatted in at least two years, even after major hardware upgrades and MANY software problems.

So what's the big deal? Takes me under two hours to format and get everything reinstalled on my machine, and it's not like I can't do other things while doing it. Not to mention if you bring Norton Ghost into the equation, it narrows that timeframe down to more like 6 or 7 minutes.

Why do people cringe at the word "format"? I think of it as something sort of like showering.. you accumulate dirt and crud over time, and need to wipe it clean every once in a while. How else are you going to keep optimal system performance?

 

[Nutcase99]

Uhh... Once a month? I think thats a little excessive. I mean its not that people are afraid of formatting I think it's best avoided when possible because it takes so much time to get things back the way I like them. Reinstall all the programs, make backups etc. Not really worth it if you don't NEED to format.


Just my 2 cents.

 

[Viper GTS]

Once a month? Are you obsessive-compulsive? Every ~6 months is sufficient, if you ask me...

Viper GTS

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Bringing a complex system up from nothing can be difficult and down right dangerous if the user isn't comfortable and prepared. After the last reformat on my main system it took me 4 days to get it stable and have all the hardware functioning.

 

[DAM]

win2k has done it for me, havent reformatted in some time.






dam()

 

[chemos]

Well, in my particular case, formatting (like I said) only takes about 10 minutes or so. Load the ghost image, copy over email, and I'm done. I also run a batch file via system agent which backs up my email to another drive on a daily basis so I don't have to worry about that until I've got the ghost image loaded.

I think if people were to format more often, and used some of the many tools available out there, they'd become more comfortable with it and do it when necessary. But for most people, it's a last resort. *shrugs* And I don't think it should be.. at all.

 

[StageLeft]

Depends the OS and what you're doing, but if you are hardcore on a win98 machine I'd give it's life expectancy a few months...

I also can't bloody stand a slow computer because it hasn't been recently formatted.

 

[BiggieN]

i'm not a regular backer upper. i'm sure not many people are either. so they aren't afraid of formatting, they are more afraid of losing their information. i have some programs which cannot be reinstalled due to the fact that i don't have the cd anymore, but i have to make the transition over to Win2k for the stability that it promises. so i will lose these programs when i do reformat.

 

[chemos]

<< ...they are more afraid of losing their information. i have some programs which cannot be reinstalled due to the fact that i don't have the cd anymore... >>



They're afraid of losing what they don't already have? What if their hard drive were to die? What if the program had a file go corrupt and it needed reinstalled?

A little bit of planning can go a long way. If you partition your drive(s) into at least two partitions, you have a simple way to back up data (from partition to partition). You also have a handy place to put a ghost image, which you can use to format easily into infinity. And you won't need those CDs you keep losing after that (or you can copy the cabs off of them onto your backup partition as well).

Win98 has a pretty low life expectancy, but not nearly as low as Win95 imo. Either way, I'd format that puppy at the very least twice a year. Also when making large hardware upgrades (esp motherboard).

Who knows.. maybe people who don't format often are just used to the sluggishness and problems it creates. But they're probably also the ones complaining about how lousy MS software is, how it locks up all the time, etc etc.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Skoorb: there is ways to clean a computer w/o formatting. My Win98 machine here at work has gone about a year and a half w/o reformatting w/ a Gateway install. W/ Office 97, OrCAD, AutoCAD LT97, and dozens of other useful programs (and some installed because the company requires them) I still manage to have only 1.3GB used on a 8.4GB HD.

It now never crashes, outruns systems whose CPUs that are more than 50% faster (w/ much more RAM), and hasn't lost a lick of usability.

Maintenance is more important than starting over. A coworker of mine reformats because he gets a virus every two months (yes, the same virus, wanna guess where I think he gets it from?), to him a clean install involves having 20 (yes, I counted once) icons next to the clock in Win98... AND HE STILL wonders why it's bogging down.

Edit: I did a rotorooter job cleaning up the Gateway install removing almost all evidence of it being an OEM install

 

[wyvrn]

If the reason you are formatting is to cure software ills, then using a ghost image can be counter-productive. In other words, you are ghosting the &quot;bugs&quot; back onto a newly formatted disk, so you will encounter a lot of the same problems. Unless, of course, you are ghosting a base image (like with your OS and all the programs installed before significant usage) and then going from there.

I agree though, I have an exta partition setup for all of my data files, and I like to format every few months to get the kinks out. I don't use ghost, just re-install the few apps that I use. I don't have 1000 programs installed so it pretty quick for me, and I don't use a lot of buggy shareware either. I should look into getting a cdburner though because I format so often...

 

[Adul]

I had at one point this year manage to toa format in a weekly fashion. I think I am at 8 or 9 for the year. My last one doesnt count really, it was a new hd with a clean install of win2k, and linux.

 

[Linh]

If you only install what you need, you don't really have to reformat. My computer only has what I use, I don't install every neat little game/app I run across just to test it out.

 

[ArkAoss]

well, a full format on my main system, it hasn't had all the files wiped out in ages, on other systems, sure, but my main system is 98se over 98 over 95b over 95, (It started as a handme down system, and I've never wiped it totally out, always over the previous, even to a new drive, i copy the old to the new, take out win.com and install over it, and usually keep the old drive with the old install arround for a few months. but one of these days I'm gonna take a record of everything I use, and what i have installed that I still have, and do a wipe, just don't have the 3 days it'll take me. And btw, it boots in the same amount of time as my p2 300 at work, and it nt, and has to log into an nt domain and a novel server.
the home system is a 450 p2. i need to clean out some nic drivers though.

 

[geno]

My friend does it once a week about Whenever something goes wrong - he formats. Any error messages when booting? Format!!

 

[kranky]

My previous PC (Win 3.1) ran for 6+ years without a reformat. It was stable, so what was the point? My current PC is over a year old, and also stable, so I don't know what I could gain from reformatting except downtime, much aggravation, and the possibility of losing data.

But I see your point about machines that are having problems. That's a good reason.

 

[Lord Evermore]

If a machine was having problems and obviously had a lot of driver issues and software problems, then a format is a good thing. But, if the system doesn't have any obvious problems, or is having problems that might be cured through other means, a format DOES take far longer than is worth it. If you could fix it by removing all the drivers for something and reinstalling it, why format? Or by cleaning up some configuration files, or anything else where you remove cruft.

Formatting is a pain in the ass. I've got too much software installed for it to be easy to just reload my system, and that's just the stuff I use on a daily basis. Just loading Windows, lodaing device drivers (which of course I've had to take the time to locate and put onto a CD or floppy) and then getting all of the Windows updates loaded takes forever. Then loading all of the apps I use daily, along with rebuilding their configuration files and any data files I backed up (if you're reloading, you wouldn't want to use the same old trash configuration files of course, or why bother reloading?). Then the apps I don't use on a daily basis. And of course before the format I would have had to locate the installation disks or files for all of those apps and put them somewhere that I could copy them back.

And just storing programs and data on one partition and Windows on another doesn't work, because most programs use the Registry too much now. You can't just reinstall windows and make a shortcut to the executable and expect most apps to work (and most of the time you'd want the start menu item to be installed, not have to go through and do each one by hand). SOME might be able to reload their own settings in the new Registry, but many have required settings that are only created by an installation of the program.

About the only thing that can safely and efficiently be backed up and restored are data files and a few minor applications. Anything else will require a reinstall, with all of the discs and files having to be located, along with any patches or updates or upgrades, and any serial numbers needed.

Far too much time for me to spend on it unless I absolutely had to. I manage to keep my system in pretty good shape just by doing regular maintenance. I don't install stuff I don't need, and when I uninstall something I make sure all files and settings are removed if possible (it's hard sometimes if files get installed to \windows\system or something like that, you can't be sure what's what). I go through in Explorer once in a while and just browse my file system looking for crap directories or files, and I do the same in the Registry looking for deleted program references. I've only twice tried a complete reinstall, and though I'm sure it helped clean up some of the cruft, I don't think it was really much of a performance improvement. It just made the system feel cleaner.

 

[Dameon]

1) People dont want to format because it means work.

2) Software Piracy. Friend brought over CD, found crack. etc. etc.

I can't tell you how many times I've gotten the response of &quot;But I won't have Office / Photoshop anymore!&quot; when I told someone to format.

3) Crappy backup procedures. People DO NOT backup like they should. Swear to god every home user should be forced to have IDE RAID 1 just because of user failure to backup. No one backs up their stuff before calling tech support over. Ever. People that smart don't call tech support.

 

[kami]

I usually only reformat when upgrading motherboards. Backing up and re-installing everything and setting everything how i like it again is a pain in the ass and I only want to do that if it's necessary!

 

[dcdomain]

Only format when errors start popping up. I would format more often if it wasn't as labor intensive. I'm afraid of losing osme information that I forgot to back up. Has happened to me several times...

 

[urbantechie]

Geez!!! 1 month???? Way too frequent for me. I am a fdisk/format activist, but only at 4+ months.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Where's Sam Hell?

Do they have a low failure rate on PC parts there?

 

[zippy]

I reformat when I need to, not every other month just for the hell of it.

 

[apoppin]

I used to format rather often - probably once a month. But that was because I would see subtle problems. When I finally got all my drivers to work well with each other by getting all the bugs out of Win98SE - I haven't needed to in well over 6 months.

I do regular backups and try out a lot of demo games and programs. When my system shows signs of problems or behaving sluggishly, I will format without hesitation. Also, when I do a major hardware upgrade, I will also format.

Afraid to format?? - No way.

Format needlessly - Why bother?