Help Formatting PC

[djastroboy]

Hey guys, just a question, i know theres heaps of partition and format tools out there to help you do certain things, but what i was wondering is instead of formatting the old fashioned way, and losing everything, is there a way i can format and not lose anything, so i dont have to do a million re installs? my hard drive is partitioned NTFS. and i have my C: where all my windows files are stored seperate to all my other drives.

is this wishful thinking? or can you do it?

 

[edklite]

well not really, you can clone your drive then format it then copy the clone back on it, however I'm not quite sure what the point of format would be.

in other words most times when you format something has gone wrong with your windows that is not repairable so you have to reinstall and the best way to reinstall is on a full format.

but if you doing it to fix the sectors of the hd then the cloning is what you are looking for I belive, don't hold me to it I'm no expert, that is just my opinion.

 

[pscowboy]

YES!

But not in the formatting arena. I came to this technique about 5 years ago. Listen up. I do this for friends and virtually all my customers.

You set up your box with a primary boot hard drive, and a secondary storage drive where ALL dynamic data goes - along with AN IMAGE HOLDING PARTITION!

You take great pains to get your primary hd set up with everything you need and want, including up-to-the-minute updates. That could take 8-10 hours for a techie, or 2-3 days for a lay person. No matter - end result the same. The rig is now functioning perfectly.

You image (using an app like True Image) the "C" drive and put the copy in the Image folder over on the second hd. You consistently keep doing this every other week or so, and when any major software change is made. The process takes less than an hour. NO NEED FOR TEDIOUS, EXPENSIVE, NOBODY'S-GOING-TO-DO-THEM BACKUPS! No collection of cd's laying around.

You only have to keep the latest two. Now, here's the best part - YOU ALSO SET UP AN IMAGE FOLDER ON "C", AND PUT THE "D" DRIVE IMAGEs THERE. Same technique; keep the latest two. The same day you image "C"; you then also image "D".

There is no way you're going to lose both hd's the same day. If one or the other goes down, you're covered. You invest in four hard drives the same - keep two on the shelf. You can get great WD's now for $70-$80 to do the job.

When you get to that point one day the "C" drive is funky (could happen within minutes) - you have an image no more than a week or two old with which to restore your unit to like-new operation - FULLY SETUP AGAIN - in less than an hour. What's not to like.

You should take pains to keep the "C" drive running well. Top, consistent maintenance all the time.
AV, Spyware, Defrag, Registry clean & compress, getting rid of crap files, etc.
Keeping a comp running well is a steady work-in-progress. That way your images are quality.

 

[djastroboy]

THANKS TO BOTH OF YOU SPECIAL THANKS TO PSCOWBOY FOR THE DETAILS AND HINTS , I VOTED FOR BOTH UR MESSAGES.