Caution: Format hard drive with careful planningAfter a year or so it is usually good do a system clean up or hard disk format and re-install. You might also wish to use the format hard drive operation before an operating system upgrade. Before you format your hard drive, make sure you plan carefully. Of course, you realize that the format command does not [yet] have a reverse or undo command.
When to do a hard drive formatIf your computer is one or two years old you surely have a lot of garbage piled up on your hard disk. Plan for a format hard drive and operating system re-install or upgrade. If your computer is more than two years old, you know you are using outdated technology. A hard disk format operation may also be in order if you use the internet a lot, download lots of files on your hard drive, or if you have corrupted system files. Reformat hard drive - for what reasons?There are two main reasons you might want to do a complete hard drive cleanup by formatting:
That is, it could be to get better performance from a more up-to-date version of Windows, or to get a clean install of the same OS. After a year or so, the Windows system registry (a large database of you system settings contained on your hard drive) gets very large and difficult to manage. Whenever this happens (your computer gradually slows, especially on startup), you can do the format hard drive thing. Before you format your hard driveBefore you format your hard drive make sure you do a backup of your important information. It should help you to consider the suggestions given on the backup-hard-drive page. In fact, if after you enter the format hard drive command you hear yourself spitting expletive utterances, you know you did not take the advice for backing up your important files and information, given on this page. Along with securing a backup of your documents, settings, and other files, you should backup your username and passwords. Some people set their browsers to automatically log them in to certain sites. In other words, they use the auto-fill and auto-complete features built into later versions of Windows. These passwords will be gone when you do a clean re-install of the Windows operating system, so write all your passwords down on paper. Extra CautiousUsually before I format my hard drive, I spend several days planning. It is very easy to miss something. That's why you should check the set of things given on backup hard drive page on this site. You could say I am extra cautious. Well, that's one of the reasons, that after I send that format hard drive command you will never hear me utter a sigh or or exclamation of grief. Don't just get up one day and clean off everything on your hard disk without planning your route to the next stage carefully.
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Software & OS |
WARNING: Before you give or throw away your old computer, make sure you completely clean your hard drive. Why? Even after you format your drive the information is still there and can be retrieved by almost anyone using specialized software. Use something like Evidence Eliminator or CyberScrub to erase your old drives at least to the Department of Defence specification and avoid being a victim of identity theft. Click here for more information.
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