I agree with Amazinz on pretty much everything he said. I guess it's my OCD with keeping stuff neat and organized, but I reformat my computers at least every six months. It just seems to make them run faster and smoother overall and it only takes a couple hours. I don't have an inordinate amount of programs that I have to reinstall and worry about settings/profiles so I guess that makes it a little easier for me, but even with things like games and Firefox and stuff all you have to do is make backups of appropriate data files which usually isn't too tough to figure out. Anyway, I should probably get off my soapbox as you guys are probably sick of hearing from me about this, but before I do, just wanted to say we should all be switching to Linux anyway.
Amazinz wrote:To create ghost image you need software such as Norton Ghost. If you're using Windows XP you can just reinstall and the XP setup has an option to reformat. Just make sure you backup everything you need. If you're using an older Windows you'll need to create a boot disk. I suggest Googling it and reading about it at some of the tech sites before diving in. Not that it's difficult but just so you have a complete understand.
is there a difference between norton ghost and partitioning the hard-drive. also, does the "picture" of the hard drive saved include softowar and such like firfox, etc?
Partitioning means breaking up a single physical drive into seperate logical drives. For instance, I have a 120 GB HDD. Instead of having one big C: drive. I have it split into 3 40 GB sections ( C: D: E: ). These sections are partitions.
The image of the hard drive saves an exact copy (everything) of the hard drive at the time it is taken.
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Partitioning means breaking up a single physical drive into seperate logical drives. For instance, I have a 120 GB HDD. Instead of having one big C: drive. I have it split into 3 40 GB sections ( C: D: E: ). These sections are partitions.
The image of the hard drive saves an exact copy (everything) of the hard drive at the time it is taken.
well this maybe a stupid question then , but what would be the point of reformatting if the image just saves the exact copy of the hard drive
You can navigate through the image using Ghost explorer to restore files you may have deleted in the formatting process that you can't get back. It's a quick and easy way to get back the files you need or if something goes wrong with the formatting process, you can just reload the original image and try again.
Coppermine wrote:You can navigate through the image using Ghost explorer to restore files you may have deleted in the formatting process that you can't get back. It's a quick and easy way to get back the files you need or if something goes wrong with the formatting process, you can just reload the original image and try again.
you guys are awesome are there any other basic computer maintenance techniques that you guys would reccommend or anything else that keeps your computer running better in general?
what is recommended to completely delete unwanted files, temp files ect. to clear up space since simply emptying the recycle bin really doesn't clear up space? also if you use software like norton ghost does that take away the need to partition any of your drives in case of a system crash or is better to do both?
As far as clearing up "space" on your hard drive is concerned, when you empty your recycle bin, those files are removed from the digital space (KB, MB, GB, etc) on the drive and essentially frees it up.
What Amazins was talking about earlier, just to simplify, is that files are always "recoverable" after being deleted from the hard drive just because of the way Windows manages it's file structure. There are, of course, Windows registry entries and unregistered .dll's that will inevitably remain and as mentioned earlier, only a "file shredding" utility can permanently delete them.
For all intents and purposes though, you can safely assume that once files are emptied from the Recycle Bin, they are effectively gone from your hard drive and no longer taking up space, using resources etc.
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Coppermine wrote:As far as clearing up "space" on your hard drive is concerned, when you empty your recycle bin, those files are removed from the digital space (KB, MB, GB, etc) on the drive and essentially frees it up.
What Amazins was talking about earlier, just to simplify, is that files are always "recoverable" after being deleted from the hard drive just because of the way Windows manages it's file structure. There are, of course, Windows registry entries and unregistered .dll's that will inevitably remain and as mentioned earlier, only a "file shredding" utility can permanently delete them.
For all intents and purposes though, you can safely assume that once files are emptied from the Recycle Bin, they are effectively gone from your hard drive and no longer taking up space, using resources etc.
got that thx?
as for the other question, if i got norton ghost would it still be advantageous to partition my hard drive in case of a crash?
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by SaintsOfTheDiamond » Fri Oct 21, 2005 9:52 am 
I guess it's my OCD with keeping stuff neat and organized, but I reformat my computers at least every six months. It just seems to make them run faster and smoother overall and it only takes a couple hours. I don't have an inordinate amount of programs that I have to reinstall and worry about settings/profiles so I guess that makes it a little easier for me, but even with things like games and Firefox and stuff all you have to do is make backups of appropriate data files which usually isn't too tough to figure out. 
, but what would be the point of reformatting if the image just saves the exact copy of the hard drive 
