just wondering how often others format their PC..



I have made it a habit, twice a year (roughly every six months), to copy anything important to an external HDD, completely wipe all my HDD's, and re-install everything from scratch (OS, Drivers, Programs, Peripherals, etc..)

a former co-worker referred to this as "overkill", but its just a process I have done for many years (ever since the first machine i installed XP on back in 2003).. more so out of habit than anything else at this point.. I know my machine doesn't really need to be reformatted so often, but I do it anyways.. you know, gives me something to do with my otherwise boring afternoons....



So, how often do you reformat your PC?

Whenever I detect a trojan. Which is once.

I only do it, if deemed necessary. Once every few years on average.

If you are reformatting your computer every 6 months: it might be a better solution to get backup software to make a clean state image (backup), and simply "re-image" the computer versus manually reloading every driver and program. Refomatting too often is just wearing out of your hard drive more quickly.

I have an Image that I made just after install, never connected to the web. I also have one after all the updates and major programs are installed and everything is tweaked. It just takes minutes to wipe and reinstall. I keep all my data on another drive, so I am back up and running fairly quickly.

That being said, I never seem to have a need to do this after Service Pack 2 for XP. Prior to that? About every 3 to 6 months I would back up mod configurations and re-image the drive.

i don't reformat the hard drive. don't see any reason to.

In recent years, almost never. I keep a complete backup of my system on an external hard drive and update it regularly, so if something goes horribly wrong it's just a matter of booting into the rescue disk and restoring the system from that image.

The last time I had to do a complete wipe and restore was about 10 years ago on a previous computer, when a Norton disk optimizer completely trashed the system. I haven't allowed any Norton product on any computer of mine since then.

When something seriously malfunctions with the OS, which is rare since I keep my pc squeeky clean at all times with CCleaner, manually clearing out left over folders, temp files, archiving things onto external hdds, etc...

If it ain't broke, dont fix it. Worst case scenario is your registry will get a bit clogged, but that's unavoidable. I use a lot of different software, its a [censored] hassle having to re-install it all, not to mention all the games.

I don't think I ever have. I play mostly for gaming, and I never really check any websites that are not legit like Bethesda and such. Haven't had a trojan or virus in the 20 years I've been on comps. When my comp starts slowing down after about 5 years or so, I just have a newer one built. Getting cheaper every time too.

Only when something awful infects my computer and I'm not capable of removing it myself. I'm far to poor to afford a back-up HDD, so when I reformat a computer, I lost EVERYTHING that I have on there, which pretty much svcks.

Very rarely since converting to Windows 7. Last time was for my SSD a couple years ago. Used to do twice a year during my XP days.

Only when I have to (re)install Windows, which usually coincide with hardware overhaul.

It was fairly common back in the Windows 9x days, but now? Whenever I do a major hardware upgrade, which I guess is every 4 years or so.

That said, I'm thinking about getting a system SSD in a somewhat near future, so I suppose I will reinstall Windows later this year some time.

Preferably never, i dont even know if i can trust my damned backups anymore. A few years back my external disk decided not to work, apparently it was some hardware problem inside the damn disk. Took it back to the store, and if i were to retrieve the data it would cost me a bomb. So i just swapped it for a new one.

Fast forward to a few months ago, my internal disk went kaput and i needed to restore from my external disk. After working for a while the disk decided that it wouldnt be detected. Didnt work on my alternative computer either, but strangely enough it works on my technician's computer (lol).

Never, although with my son's computer I should probably have made a clean backup when I first gave him the computer. I should really reformat or reimage it every week. It's a mess.

Never. Buuut, it defrags every wednesday.