Reformatting

[darin1992]

I was thinking about reformatting my computer because its starting to get cluttered, but I was wondering is there any way to save my music and pictures through a reformat, would I have to put them all on external usb or external storage?

Darin

 

[An_Idiot_Blooming]

If you have extra space on your hard drive you could create a new partition on the disk and put them there, and then choose not to format that part of your hard drive when re-installing your OS.

It's actually good practice to have your OS on it's own partition anyways for exactly this reason among others.

Short of what that and what you already mentioned, there is no way that I am aware of. And because formatting re-creates the sectors on your hard drive, I can't see a way to do so.

 

[darin1992]

How can I tell if my OS is on its on partition? sorry im not good at the whole like installing/software side of computers

 

[Passerby]

no you cant keep data through a format but you could resize your main partition to make space to make a new and keep your data there.

which the best way to set things is to have your operating system and on partition and all of your data (music, vids, document etc) on there own partition. this is the best way because you can wipe out the whole operating system and keep all of your stuff on.

this is how iv alway had my setups partitions

drive1
part1 30gb for openSuSE linux
part2 4gb linux swap
part3 200gb for windows
part4 66gb (i just use this as space to install os's that im testing)

drive2
part1 1tb for all of my personal files and data

 

[Passerby]

How can I tell if my OS is on its on partition? sorry im not good at the whole like installing/software side of computers

does it show multiple drives in my computer

 

[darin1992]

Yah I have two HDD's I installed. Theres my 150gb raptor drive and then my 500gb Barracuda. So should I just move everything I want to save from my 150 gb (the one with the OS On it) to my 500 gb then reformat? I wast sure if it would leave my other drive intact

 

[Arn0t]

yes. that will work. Just make sure, when installing your new operating system, the only drive you reformat is your 150GB, NOT your 500.

If you format both of your drives you WILL lose all of your information. But in formatting only your 150GB, all of the information will stay intact on the 500GB drive.

 

[HaloRacer]

Don't partition your drives. Partitioning is sort of a silly idea, and while it can be useful if you only have one hard drive and want two operating systems, overall it does not provide any real benefits. I love it when I see people who "backup" their hard drive ON THE SAME HARD DRIVE on another partition. Well if the drive fails, you lose both anyway!

I also don't think partitioned drives defragment as well. I keep my computer extremely streamlines with no weird crap like partitioning. get an external hard drive or a second internal to make life much easier.

 

[Passerby]

Don't partition your drives. Partitioning is sort of a silly idea, and while it can be useful if you only have one hard drive and want two operating systems, overall it does not provide any real benefits. I love it when I see people who "backup" their hard drive ON THE SAME HARD DRIVE on another partition. Well if the drive fails, you lose both anyway!

I also don't think partitioned drives defragment as well. I keep my computer extremely streamlines with no weird crap like partitioning. get an external hard drive or a second internal to make life much easier.

partitioning drives has no affect on defrags and in most case expect for making a backup (which backups should always be on a septate medium) it is actually a lot easier and more economical.

 

[darin1992]

I know what you mean halo but I have two physical drives, so I'm not backing it up on the same drive I'm just putting things that I wish to keep (music/pictures) on my E:\ and reformatting the C:\ drive. I might put my steam folder there too so I dont lose all my favorite servers and lose settings.