How often do you format your hard drive?

[curiousbunny]

I try to reimage my system every 3 months 2 remove any spyware stuff.
How often do u guys do it ?

[basschick]

i've never needed to reformat my harddrive. i've used three main computers from 1996 till now with no real problems.

[Dzinerbear]

oh yuck, I try to avoid this one as much as possible. It takes me three months of tweaking to get it just the way I like it.

dzinerbear

[kcwebwerks]

I also try to avoid having to do this, but for some reason I have to do it about once every six months or so. Be it from viruses that have gotten past my anti-virus program or XP screwing up. I also on average have to replace hard drives about once a year. Last year I had to replace the hard drive containing my OS as well as replace my archive hard drive. Just had to reformat about a month ago so I should be good until about September. (the one year mark on the new drives)

[curiousbunny]

oh yuck, I try to avoid this one as much as possible. It takes me three months of tweaking to get it just the way I like it.

dzinerbear

Yea i hear ya, waht i do is i install everything i need make all the changes i like then i create an image with ghost and that's the one i restore so i dont have to do everything again when i format/reimage.

[CuriousToyBoy]

Just the thought of a reformat scares the shit out of me !

I run maintainance often and lots of ongoing clean ups, but try and avoid total wipes - it takes too long to reload everything !

:wtf:

[Madame0120]

We reformat when it needs to be reformatted. This question confuses me.

It's the troubleshooting that factors it down to:
Oh crap .. gona have to reformat.
And always a last resort, no?

I'm happy that's not my department.

[Marc]

I try to reimage my system every 3 months 2 remove any spyware stuff.
How often do u guys do it ?

I used to do it every 3 months to kill the spyware, and its nice to just have a fresh clean computer to work with.
But then I switched to firefox and I haven't gotten spyware since.

[AusCoding Allan]

I'm normally up for a 12 monthly format because that's about how often I upgrade my computer to keep up to date.

Cheers,

Allan

[desslock]

I try to reimage my system every 3 months 2 remove any spyware stuff.
How often do u guys do it ?

That sounds like way way overkill. Just run Norton AntiVirus regularly, update your definations regularly. If you are paranoid about spyware, run that free Microsoft spyware program.

Don't open stupid stuff while surfing --- like ActiveX controls.

And you should be just fine.

Steve

[Xstr8guy]

Lol, I just bought a new computer so I didn't have to reformat.
Thank god for external firewire drives!

[basschick]

why not use spysweeper, an antivirus, and maybe adaware instead of reformatting? i've had great results doing that - no need to reformat, no slowing or weirdness on my computer.

or even more effective, don't use ie to surf sites - use mozilla firefox. EVERY piece of spyware, trojan or virus i ever got was while using ie.

[curiousbunny]

well i like to test alot of software am always downloading new stuff or bunch of programs to chk them out so even after i uninstall them my system doesnt run the same so i like 2 keep it clean.
I have a laptop and a desktop and i do my testing of new stuff on my desktop and that's the one i try to format ever 3mos or so i think 2 day is a good day 4 format heehehhehe ok maybe not sure

[basement]

A tech guided me through an unnecessary reformat once before i understood its consequences. Hope to never do that again. On the other hand i resort to my system restore on XP frequently.

[Lee]

oh yuck, I try to avoid this one as much as possible. It takes me three months of tweaking to get it just the way I like it.

dzinerbear

Im the same way although my HD only really ever gets reformatted if there is a major problem.

Regards,

Lee