How Often Do You Reformat.

[chopsuey]

On a yearly basis how often do you do a wipe?

For 2009 i think this is my 2nd or 3rd for my desktop. First for my laptop. Last year may have been close to 4 on the desktop.



I just have to say, thank god i bought an external HD to store my music, movies, and data. Also has anyone noticed to do a clean install of xp takes an hour or more and 7 takes 30 minutes? Awesome.

 

[Zidane24]

about 80 times this year already...

 

[Disk4mat]

Every 4 to 6 months using a drive image. Or in the event of a virus/trojan. In that instance I dont even bother to clean the infection. Just restore and image.

 

[Uber Philf]

probs once a year, but this year 30-40 times.

 

[Airbot]

Also has anyone noticed to do a clean install of xp takes an hour or more and 7 takes 30 minutes? Awesome.

Maybe every couple of months or so. If I see some sluggy behavior here and there.

Clean install, from booting from the disc--to desktop, takes just about 12 minutes for me. Has since one or two post beta builds.

 

[Brian the King]

Generally every 3 or 4 years

 

[starwolf1336]

Usually twice a year, unless i get a virus i cant get rid of

 

[Ryanrpv77]

Windows 95 - Every Second Week
Windows 95 upgrade - Every week
Windows 98 - Every 3 months
Windows 98 SE - once a year
WinXP - Every year, can use it for 2 years if im lucky or no virus find it way on my pc
Windows 7 - first install 2 days ago ....

 

[Lee]

Once each quarter. This time it will be twice this quarter. . .downloading OpenSuse 11.2; will load up later this evening.

 

[Mivo]

I don't really format any of my machines unless an OS breaks beyond repair or I install a new Linux distro.

Back when I used Ubuntu more, I did a clean install for every new version (6 months cycle), but later switched to a rolling release distro, so no reinstalls are needed. I don't remember ever having had to reformat any of my Windows boxes. (I'm not sure how people catch so many viruses, but I don't pirate and generally don't download a lot of executable stuff.)

Windows 7 has only been on my desktop for two weeks, so can't say much about it. I can say, though, that if I had to reformat more than, say, once a year, I'd switch platforms. (I have five machines: one with W7, one with XP, two with Linux, one with FreeBSD.) I mean, it's fine for an experimental box, but anything I do work on really needs to be stable and mature enough to not require me to reformat the HDDs.

 

[Tews]

Unless I do something to mess it up, every six months is about right...

 

[pparks1]

My reformats generally stem from wanting to try something new and different rather than a problem that I cannot resolve or don't want to put time/effort into resolved.

Examples might be 1). new release of Windows. 2). New Linux distro 3). wanting to test some wacky scenario for work at home and needing some extra hardware to pull it all off.

 

[scubasteve]

For XP, about once a year...but I often didn't need to do so. Man, I used that OS on about half a dozen personal machines since it hit the streets (and still use it at work)...and after they got the bugs worked out in the first year, it was the most stable OS that I had ever used. Thus, I was mostly just reformatting to clean things up and satisfy my OCD.



With Win 7, three time thus far.

First Time - installed and it was awesome...but I made the mistake of installing a media meta data synch tool that installed SQL Server without warning...and after extensive effort to remove all traces of it, I finally just reformatted.

Second time - Massive Explorer instability - all related to right-clicking. None of the suggested tweaks solved it...so...

Third Time - is a charm so far. Only one right-click explorer crash...and none since uninstalling AVG and moving to MSE.



In general, I keep all data on a separate drive so reformatting is a breeze. In XP, I simply retargeted "My Documents" to a different drive...and I do something similar with Win 7's libraries. I don't ever backup the OS and apps. I like to start clean and reevaluate what I want and get the latest versions each time.

 

[smarteyeball]

I had my fill of formats/installations throughout the beta process.

Now it's back to re-formatting when something gets completely broken. Sooo, probably every few months

 

[Jacee]

I've only reformatted once on all three of my machines ... XP home (something broke!), XP Pro to Vista Business, Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate.

I guess I've been pretty lucky

 

[SteeLx]

it depends if i really need to install a new Graphix card or any hardware.
3-4months span

 

[Lebon14]

To be honnest, I only format
1. when I feel that the OS starts to be buggy, too slow or has a virus.
2. when I just bought an OS.

It can be from 6-8 months to 1 year most of the time.

 

[tw33k]

I try and keep it down to once a year if I can help it. I have an image of my drive which makes the whole process rather pain free

 

[patio]

Every 3 months on average here...

 

[zigzag3143]

Quarterly. From an image of clean install with apps. 20 mins to clean