New Year... Advice On Reformatting My Rig Please

[Cold_Gambler]

Here we are at the end of 2010 and it's high time I got around to re-formatting my rig from fresh, especially now that I've received Norton Ghost from Skypup (Thanks again!).

I've never [humble] done a re-format before so I could use some general advice and I've got a portable hard-drive I can transfer the necessary drivers and such to.

I'd like to get a nice clean install with all the hardware drivers and basic "essential suite" of games and software on so that I'll be able to both reformat this computer and also possibly move the data over to a new rig next year.

Does anyone have any general advice (or specific advice for IL-2) for me, or links to a good guide to do this?

Thanks,

C_G

[delta7]

1. Dont do it unless necessary, it is a bit of work and there is the real risk of something bad happening- remember you will lose EVERYTHING in a format

2. If you do decide to go ahead then be prepared

you will need

1) the windows disk- preferrably the pro version

2) driver disks

i) motherboard

ii) graphics

iii) soundcard- if seperate from motherboard

iv) any other peice of hardware

If you dont have them then download all the latest drivers you require and burn them onto a dvd and keep this handy

3) Installation disks for all the software you need

4) patches for your software - burn these to the same DVD you burned your drivers on

5) Copy all your game patches and savegames and config files to your DVD

6) copy all you important information to your backup drive- all your my documents folder, all photographs , porn etc

7) get in a supply of patience and coffee

8 ) google for a guide, print and keep it handy e.g.

http://howtoformatacomputer.com/format-windows-xp

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_setup.htm

or go to library and get a manual, microsoft official manual is excellent but pricey

9) Convince yourself you really really want to do it and after setting bios to make sure your PC will boot from cd drive first, put windows disk in and carry on

10 ) consider partitions when doing the reinstall - I like these for dividing up my drive into logical areas like Operating System; Work; Games; Photographs etc

11 ) Take a backup just after you have a clean system i.e. just windows with updated drivers using ghost

With il2 you can copy the entire folder to your spare drive and copy it onto your new system and it will run ok , with most other software you will have to install it fully onto your new sytem so that the registry is complete

good luck

[Sid]

Sound advice.....

[DD_Arthur]

1. Dont do it unless necessary, it is a bit of work and there is the real risk of something bad happening- remember you will lose EVERYTHING in a format

2. If you do decide to go ahead then be prepared

you will need

1) the windows disk- preferrably the pro version

2) driver disks

i) motherboard

ii) graphics

iii) soundcard- if seperate from motherboard

iv) any other peice of hardware

If you dont have them then download all the latest drivers you require and burn them onto a dvd and keep this handy

3) Installation disks for all the software you need

4) patches for your software - burn these to the same DVD you burned your drivers on

5) Copy all your game patches and savegames and config files to your DVD

6) copy all you important information to your backup drive- all your my documents folder, all photographs , porn etc

7) get in a supply of patience and coffee

8 ) google for a guide, print and keep it handy e.g.

http://howtoformatacomputer.com/format-windows-xp

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_setup.htm

or go to library and get a manual, microsoft official manual is excellent but pricey

9) Convince yourself you really really want to do it and after setting bios to make sure your PC will boot from cd drive first, put windows disk in and carry on

10 ) consider partitions when doing the reinstall - I like these for dividing up my drive into logical areas like Operating System; Work; Games; Photographs etc

11 ) Take a backup just after you have a clean system i.e. just windows with updated drivers using ghost

With il2 you can copy the entire folder to your spare drive and copy it onto your new system and it will run ok , with most other software you will have to install it fully onto your new sytem so that the registry is complete

good luck

Bloody hell! Why not do some basic house-keeping, delete stuff you don't want, re-install the stuff you really need; e.g. IL2 and do a disk defrag? I'd be very cautious about updating drivers, very much one at a time.

[Blairgowrie]

Hell no. He can always find the drivers. Let it rip Angus.

[T_O_A_D]

My $.02

If you have enough HD space or multiple drives, I'd have no less than three partitions.

And have the OS's make it dual boot.

XP first then Win 7

Set both up with the essentials for your needs. All your hardware drivers, Joystick software, trackir and all your profiles, ect.

Then ghost them both.

Then in a separate partition start putting in your Games and such.

This way you have two access to your machine, if one OS goes bad.

Plus if it does your ghost disc can bring it back up to speed in less than 30 minutes, per OS.

If partitions are on same drive and drive dies, its all for not, short ghosting the info to a new drive.

So having multiple drives is actually the safest.

Some guru's advise against it, but that's the TOAD way.

I went to doing it once right after I was to compete and had a OS failure, and was not able to participate.

I've never been left out since, due to HD's or OS problems.

Just Motherboards have bit me in the Arse.

[Blairgowrie]

Just make sure you save conf.ini, user file, missions and skins.

[Snacko]

I agree it's all sound advice. I would have at least 2 partitions. One for the OS and the other for your personal files. Then, when you make a backup ghost image of C:, and you want to restore it, you won't be overwriting all your personal files back to the date of the ghost You will just be restoring Windows back to a good time when it worked well and was fresh.

And don't be afraid to do this. You're a lawyer right? So, you must be kind of smart... So, just do the reading and all the stuff mentioned above and you can do it. Or you can sue somebody if all goes wrong..

[Kimosabi]

If I were you CG, to make things as simple as possible, I'd get a new stand alone drive for the OS(so that you now will have one Master and one Slave drive), format/short stroke(partition) it to 80gb, and install Windows on that drive. When you're done with that, clean up the old HDD and use it for storage/everything else but OS. Having a separate slave drive for games etc. makes all the "regular" C: issues with IL-2 etc. disappear.

[DD_Brando]

That's an interesting point Kim, and one which I'm about to undertake. Something has screwed my Windows 7 installation and I am unable to access the 'Microsoft Management Console or my Catalyst Control centre. So I'm about to do a fresh installation onto an OCZ Vertex_2 60GB SSD.

Hopefully this will bring me back to normal, and I will be using the back-ups that I have on my 500GB 'storage' drive to restore my settings. I'm not using a mirror 'cos I lost the .tib file for my Acronis - d'oh! But once I have reloaded my drivers and my e-mail and browsers I will use Acronis to back it up.

As others have said, it is definitely worth keeping Windows and apps separate from games (using partitions and/or separate drives) and your pics, vids and music.

B

[Kimosabi]

I would really advice doing so on a regular HDD setup if speed is what you're after, well, speed and being able to not worry about other things that can get affected by installing on the OS drive. Knock on wood, I have never had any problems that relates to what others report when they have everything on the same drive. Plus, if my OS drive fails, who cares, not much to lose in there anyway. Get a new one and install again. Badabing!

Your comp should howl like a beast with that SSD, Brando.

[Snacko]

As others have said, it is definitely worth keeping Windows and apps separate from games (using partitions and/or separate drives) and your pics, vids and music.

Not sure I understand why you would want to install games on a different partition or drive other than for speed. If you install your OS on one physical disk, and your games on another physical disk, then your game may run a bit faster when it needs to access the disk where the game is installed since it won't be slowed down by whatever Windows may be doing at the moment.

But I don't think installing games on a separate drive will stop other problems you may be having will it? If a game installs, and it want's to install files into the Windows; Windows System; or other Windows folders it will find them and do so. So, I'm not sure how this would help. Can you explain? Cheers..

[Jabo]

Depends on the game m8, some (like il2) have all the necessary files in the game folder, and the only time it goes near the system files is for things like icons. We can get around that easily enough by placing shortcuts on the desktop etc. Some other games do hook deeper into windows and therefore need to be reinstalled after the windows install. That said, I have il2 on a separate drive for convenience, my il2 folders now run to over 100gb of gsme installs, downloads, skin packs, missons etc etc and I lack both the time and the inclination to go through installing that each time I reformat. My data (music & pics etc) is on a separate drive for security (I also back that up to two external drives - data loss can be painful).

In short, if you want to keep it, back it up.

Jabo

[Jabo]

FYI I'm running three internal drives of 500gb apiece; c: is for os and most software. D: & e: are a mirrored RAID for data, il2 & anything else important (I tend to hold on to drivers and program installation files so I can quickly reinstall a program if I need to). The data drive is then backed up to two 1tb external drives which are only connected to the pc while transferring data, the rest of the time, one is at my folks place and the other is in the fire safe here. Overkill? Yes, but I've lost a ton of data in the past and I'm not gambling on it again.

[Snacko]

Sounds like we do pretty much the same thing except I just install my games on my Windows drive. I put all my personal files on D & E. I have two 500gb WD Raptors and a 1T drive. I backup all my personal stuff to a external as well..

[Cold_Gambler]

Thanks for all your input! That's exactly what I needed to know.

I don't HAVE to clean up the machine, but it is experiencing a few "quirks" that are annoying (I can't re-install a game I like). I'm going to start creating my back up disks and then do the clean-up.

Thanks again,

Angus

[Perfesser]

The last few times I've done this I just bought another hard drive.

Leave your "dirty" drive alone. Install the new drive as primary.

Anything you have forgotten to do you can swap wires and have the old drive as primary to set up transfer programs (mail for instance).

Eventually you get to the point where you feel comfortable reformatting the dirty drive as you've finished setting up the new drive.

[Cold_Gambler]

The last few times I've done this I just bought another hard drive.

Leave your "dirty" drive alone. Install the new drive as primary.

Anything you have forgotten to do you can swap wires and have the old drive as primary to set up transfer programs (mail for instance).

Eventually you get to the point where you feel comfortable reformatting the dirty drive as you've finished setting up the new drive.

I think this is the option I'm going to go with... It's the simplest, fastest and, most importantly, the least prone to committing an unrecoverable error. If anything does go wrong with the install, I can just erase the new drive.

Thanks again everyone