Do I need to reformat a partitioned HD after upgrades?

[kylej]

My question deals with reformating my entire partitioned hard drive after I have upgraded components on my PC.

I have a 3 partitioned hard drive at the moment. It has one drive for just windows stuff and utility software(Firewall, spyware, antivirus, diskeeper...). Then one for just music and documents and a third for Games and their files.

I have upgraded my:
Motherboard to an entirely new chipset(Nforce4)
Processor(3700+)
Ram to a new type(DDR 400) and size(2gb)
GPU(7800GT)
PSU(520w)

I plan to reuse my current HD but I am unsure as to how it will function with all these new parts if I don't reformat the entire hard drive and re-partition and reinstall everthing.

In a perfect situation I would only need to reformat my Windows drive and reinstall the utilities. With that I would not have to lose all my music(way to much to backup to something else 25gb) and games. I am just unsure if this will effect the performance of my games though.

(Best Option) -- So I know I will have to at the very least I will need to reformat my Windows partition?


(Okay Option) -- Reformat the Windows partition and the games partition for clean reinstalls, but leave the music/docs partition alone?

(Least desired option) -- Reformat the entire thing?

Thanks,
Kyle

 

[cedric]

Format & Reinstall the OS system (windows) and the new drivers of ur new board and fire the system.Reinstallation is needed as the os must recognise the new mobo and so it will tunne itself for the new hardware.For games if u want best performance it is preferable for game files to be on the os partition and some space in another partion for the virtual memo

 

[EllisD420]

With that amount of hardware changing, you should definetly reinstall your operating system. Formatting of your other partitions is NOT necessary.