Hard Drive Reformat

I spent pretty much all day yesterday reformatting my hard drive.

My laptop is about 5 years old now. It has a tendancy to slow down over time, as it gets choked up with God-knows-what. A bit of slowdown I can handle, but everntually it gets to the point where it will stop and think for a couple of minutes at random intervals. And I don't mean when I'm running a bunch of apps at once, I mean on one application at any given time. This tells me it's time to sweep the floor and start from scratch.

I say it took all day. This is bacuase first I have to make copies of all my important files and so on (RWEP vids etc). Then I format. Then I have to re-install all the tools and applications I use as standard, Microsoft Word, Vuze, Daemon Tools, codecs, zip programs etc etc etc.

It's a pain in the ass to be honest, but there is something vaguely cathartic about it too, like when you deep clean your room / apartment and throw away all the junk you've been storing. I feel cleansed.

Oh yes, I tend to do the same once a year or so. Or at least I used to with XP. With Windows 7 I'll soon find out if it's still necessary.

While the end result is pleasing it is indeed quite a lot of work. I've forgotten to make backups of my bookmarks a couple of times for example. It's worth it though, except that every time I install a program afterwards it feels as if I'm starting to make a mess of it all again. No matter how many defrags, file and registry cleaners you run it's impossible to get back to that fresh feeling without doing a complete wipe.

CajoleryJoe wrote:

It's worth it though, except that every time I install a program afterwards it feels as if I'm starting to make a mess of it all again. No matter how many defrags, file and registry cleaners you run it's impossible to get back to that fresh feeling without doing a complete wipe.

I'm going through this phase now. In some bizarre way I almost want to leave it empty. Virgin. Unspoiled.