Reformatting a Computer

[Fyrefly]

So... because my Dad complains a lot, I would like to completely reformat my shit home computer.

Any advice I should heed before I do this? (Read: Please tell me how to *not* destroy it beyond redemption.)

Also, it's partitioned with virtual drives.
The only OS (Windows XP) is on the C drive, but I think I'll just reformat all three drives to make my life easy (will this really make my life easier? *shrugs* who knows...  )

[Russ]

Buy an external hard drive large enough to hold everything and copy it all across. That's really the golden rule for reformatting, because I can guarantee you that otherwise you'll have the "oh god i saved that document on my desktop not in my work folder".

Before you reformat make sure you have installation CDs and cdkeys for your programs. The big ones are Windows/Office etc. but there are a lot of ones that sneak through the gaps - firefox, antivirus software, java, flash and so forth. I use Ninite (google it) which is a decent little program.

Make sure you have any particularly important drivers but Windows 7 (assuming that's what you're upgrading to) does a pretty good job of finding them for you. If you're going to stick with Windows XP, maybe get the important ones beforehand and put them on a USB stick.

Getting rid of partitions is easy, you can do it during installation from memory. But it's also apparently efficient to have one OS partition and one data partition, so that programs are on the easy to access region of the drive

[Fyrefly]

Thanks for the quick reply

I'm going to keep the drives partitioned... I'm generally in favour of using partitions... I find that computers with large hard drives seem to run more efficiently long-term if they're partitioned.

[Chavi]

Loving the relevance to VCE

[excal]

Thanks for the quick reply

I'm going to keep the drives partitioned... I'm generally in favour of using partitions... I find that computers with large hard drives seem to run more efficiently long-term if they're partitioned.

They're easier to format. Just format the system partition and keep your documents, pictures etc on a separate data partition. No need to worry about pre-format backups (though you should be backing up off that drive on a regular basis as well).