who else hates re-formatting their rig?

[FnG]magnolia;20195588 said:
Oh God, this. Isn't it a colossal pain in the arse to set up though? It'd save me a load of time.
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Nope.

Just clone the partition to somewhere safe and you're done.

I used Acronis last time, can probably set it all up in less than 1 min. The copying takes a while longer ofc.
 
Yes, i lost lots of stuff, Documents, films music, games ,i downloaded, such a pain to resetup.
altho saying that my computer start up real quick now :)

"32GB SSD " thats what i need just for windows, problem solved (or maybe not, but will be easier)
 
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Stolly said:
can't say i do it all that often, can be a pain though.
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This, since getting and SSD for my OS install and vital stuff, its so damn quick I don't notice the periodic slowdown that usually forces me to reformat anyway. The only stuff on my RAID 0 is steam games and random photos (which are all backed up to a 1tb external hdd anyway)
 
got a mac, didn't need to reformat in 7 years, just bought a new one a year ago, still as quick as the day i got her.


re-formatting was one of the reasons, along with defrag'ing and anti-virus/ms config and task manager watching. god i love maintenance free computing!!
 
Reinstalled first time since i got win7 a few weeks ago, had been going commando without antivirus.. since forever actually, finally one slipped in via that retarded piece of crap that is adobe acrobat and it dropped a rootkit along with it

Took out the HD and connected it to my laptop via an esata dock, ran MSE to clean off the rootkit but even then i thought i just dont trust that MSE has got it all so i backed up everything and reinstalled anyway, figured perhaps it was due for a cleanup but wasnt really noticing any slowdown or sluggishness

Really ppl, dont cheap out and buy a 32gb SSD... you can really only fit your OS on it and aside from a quicker bootup (which for me is about 1 reboot every 3 months) your missing most of the benefit by running all your programs and games off a mechanical drive, things like not waiting for apps to load or the next level to load in whatever game your playing makes all the diff.. use fast disks for things that benefit from fast disks, only use slow disks for things like mp3s/video files that are streamed off the disk pretty slowly and dont gain anything for the extra performance
 
I almost never reformat, but then it takes me several days to re-install all my development tools and software (most have to be done in sequence which is a real pain).

I use disk imaging software so I've got backups from initial install and for the last year just in case, but I've not needed a full recovery to date. What helps is that I test any significant software updates in a virtual machine first.

None of my machines have a simple setup - I would love to be able to reformat and get the software on in a couple of hours. :(
 
steve-h said:
I quite like it. A nice fresh start :)
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This. Once in a while I format and if I've got enough time I give the pc's a good clean.

Also, it doesn't take me long I normally backup everything to an external hd and then just wack it back over. Oddly I've never used a disk image program though, will look into that for my next format.
 
Probably do mine every couple of years. It never ceases to amaze me how bloated and slow your average Windows install gets in that time - the difference in speed with a clean install is colossal. It's a drag having to patch Windows back up again though - especially given that one of my rigs is still running XP :p

I keep telling myself to try Acronis or something similar and save myself all that drudgery - will probably get hold of that for my Vista 64 machine eventually.
 
I wish I could take an image of my rig now, but somehow magic away all the crap slowing it down. I always forget to back something up when I reformat and end up all sad face. I will have to make an image of my perfect Windows install.
 
Don’t do it very often these days. Then it’s either an image or a long boring list with lots of coffee thrown in.
 
The only part I hate about re-formatting is losing all of my Steam games and needing to download them all the ones I want again. That's the part that takes ages. Installing Windows again is pretty much automatic so I just go and do other things and check back on the install every so often.

I don't really have a schedule of when I re-format. I just suddenly think "Sod it, I'll re-format" when I can be bothered.
 
Got SSD running os and some other stuff, Everything else is on my 2nd hdd, I'm toying with the idea of a bigger SSD as I'm very low on space. Will more than likely wait for W8 before I do though. Been built for about a year and it's only slowed down a tad.
 
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