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windows 7 reinstallation/data management help
Hi all,
First post here and i'm struggling!
Just recently, a few months ago, i made the beautiful switch from an old macbook pro to a gorgeous custom built desktop computer running windows 7 home premium 64bit. I am pretty comfortable with computers, and actually building the hardware was pretty easy for me. However, I realized i'm pretty clueless when it comes to maintaining a windows computer! I have had a few problems with Adware and viruses, but was able to get rid of them.
Recently things have gotten a little more serious. My computer started getting locked in a loop when playing music or video files or full screen games, then it would freeze randomly at any time. The loops was the strangest thing, it would loop anywhere from half a second to 4 seconds of the media, and the operating system would eventually freeze altogether, with the loops audio still playing. I did a system restore and it worked again for a few days, then it started happening again.
I thought it might be the driver for my video card, an MSI wtih NVidia GeForce 660. I updated it and again it seemed to be fine until i tried to run Smite (video game) in full screen. Then the whole system started freezing up again.
I'm preparing to just reinstall Windows 7 and start from the beginning again. My first question is about the data on my harddrive. I have a SSD harddrive which has windows 7 and my applications on it, and then a 2 TB WD harddrive that has all my files on it. I'm wondering if the files on my storage drive are safe for when I reinstall windows on the SSD? I feel like it should be fine, but i get paranoid and need verification from someone who knows better than me.
also, i know it would be safer to back up my files but i have really a huge amount of data and no access to an external harddrive at the moment and i just got all my files onto this computer so it would be GREAT if they were safe
Anyways! Long post, any help at all, or reassurance or anything will be incredibly appreciated !!!!!!
Also any hints, or good articles for a beginner with windows to learn about virus protection or making a windows 7 computer run smoothly would be great too.
Thanks a lot guys, anything will help.