How often do you format??

C

CrombieKid

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 14, 2004
Messages
93
..if ever.. of course.

personally, i like to format once every 6 months to avoid any useless junk being built up
 
Depends. I'm planning for a reformat around XMAS or Thanksgiving due to the fact that I installed a new 120 GB HD and my 80 GB HD is still split up into 2 partitions. I plan to make the 80 GB HD the drive with the OS and all of my programs and my 120 GB HD for all my downloads, work, etc. The partion for my OS was too small to fit some of my games so I had to put it on the DATA partition.

Anyway, I regulary reformat once a year.
 
After buying Partition Magic I don't reformat. I either resize or format new drives, but I don't reformat.
 
Every 6 months..if anyone has a problem with that deal with it :D

OldMX
 
I do the every six months also...Over the summer at some time and then over the Holiday Season when I am off from school...
 
whenever my windows install gets messed up... i reformat the windows partition. usually. so about every 6 months on average i reformat, but i have gone almost a year without having to reformat my windows partition. my linux did get formatted in that time period, though. (went from rh9 to slack9.1)
 
Depends, a lot more than most people. I've got my own unattended CD setup for extremely fast recovery, and I have two backup hard drives with all my data for quick fetching.
 
I do mine about every year to year and a half. just seems to need it at about that point...
 
I just reformatted before the summer break, but it was only my OS partition.

I lost some file though (always double check your backed up files before reformatting) so I'm afraid that I'll make the same mistake again when I do it sometime during the Holidays.
 
I format my windows boxes when they system gets to the point that it will barely crawl along anymore. Which can be from a few days (Sister + internet = 9k items in AdAware), to years like my file server.

But on the macs, never. I have no reason to, they never get ridden with viruses or spyware.
 
When building a system,
when replacing a failed motherboard,
when replacing a failed hard drive that contained the system partition

So, not a lot...

(this is home systems of course)
 
If I ever need to reinstall the os I like to clear all the partitions for the heck of it, so far ive been formatted for 1-2 years (Im sure there is a good place to check, if ya know let me know)

Oh yeah and if selling comps I like to do a write null format and just let them install the os.
 
Whenever I build a new rig. :)

I run my machines with as little bloat as possible, and keep locked files defragmented with O&O. Also, I keep security measures up to date. O&O keeps the machine defragmented as I go, and I credit it with a lot of the stability that I experience on the machines that I own. I'm also picky about what goes on what partition.
 
another "formatting throwback to the win 98 era". I have never had to reformat a win XP or a win 2k box at home. I've never had to reformat one of my own builds at work. I only reformat as part of a normal Windows XP installation. If you know how to fix XP(and protect it), reformats aren't necessary.

Win 98 or ME: Ghost a copy of a sucesful install and be prepared to reformat bimonthly.
 
over the summer, i formatted at least twice a week. probably even more than that. i had just gotten my lappy, and was lovin dual computers, and i had recently learned about unattended setups, so it was no big deal to be out a machine during a reformat, as i had my other one. it got pretty insane, my friends made a lot of fun of me for it :D
 
only when stuff really hits the fan.

I have not had to for over 2 years on my 2 primary boxes
{x86 win NT 5 & 5.1}
 
I've had my laptop for a little over a year now, and I averaged about 2 months between each wipe. I do a lot of tweaking, so I messed it up pretty often (System Restore is crap, and I'd rather reformat than restore to an image). But lately, I've cut back to just a few times a yearl: end of summer, x-mas break, Spring break, beginning of summer.

Do I need to do it that often? Probably not. But my system does run faster after each reformat. It's gotten to the point where I can have windows back up and running within 3 hours (50 minutes just for installation) with all my tweaks running perfectly (I love Unattended CD's
biggrin.gif
)
 
I probebly format my drive more then anyone else, 3 times this week because of a DCHP failure thanks to zonealarm, but besides that my averge format is once every month maybe.
 
roninblade said:
I probebly format my drive more then anyone else, 3 times this week because of a DCHP failure thanks to zonealarm, but besides that my averge format is once every month maybe.
Click to expand...

Wow.

Don't you think it's annoying reinstalling ALL of your programs once a month? I already have a few registry hacks that I would like to keep such as taskbar grouping and I tweaked the type of text in my display a little.
 
I used to format once every month or so but now probably ~6 months.
 
as infrequently as possible
generally when I f*ck something up so bad it has to be rebuilt
usually about 6mo - 1 year

with good maintenance, theres not much clutter build up

firewall
AV
regclean
spyboy / adaware
remove programs you dont need
dupe file checkers, etc
 
Never...I defragment regularly and delete all Windows files during the annual Windows reinstallation, which serves the same purpose.
 
rogue_jedi said:
whenever my windows install gets messed up... i reformat the windows partition. usually. so about every 6 months on average i reformat
Click to expand...

im with this guy

I'll reformat my windows partition or drive whenever the OS gets too bugged out and messed up to the point where it actually becomes easier to just reformat the biatch then to try and clean every bug out. And always definitely the better way for the best performance boost by giving your OS a fresh start.
 
never except installing new drive, then use NTFS quick format in drive manager so it only takes a few seconds anyways :)
 
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