How often to ReInstall XP?

[Spunkey]

as HD seek times become lower, yes the need to defrag becomes less, but you still need to do it every once in a while.

At least until we get solid state hard drives..... *drool*

[suryad]

I saw some systems at go-l.com that had solid state hard drives and for 5 gigs they were 5-6k USD a pop. Now I dont know what is going on with that website/company but their hardware was bada**. Dont know if it was all vaporware or what not.

[Xaneden]

Lol, GO-L (Lieberman Corp) went bankrupt, but, it is now back because of some investor I can't find on google....

They have a 'new' site in development. I kinda worked out the URL of the new in progress site, so here it is: http://www.go-l.com/home/index2.htm

Something that caught my eye... Go in the Supercomputer section... Its like a DEATH STAR. Plus, I'd love one of those monitor setups!

Onto the matter at hand, the most I've had to install Windows in 1 day is 11 times. I'd corrupted it someway, so I had to install Windows on the same partition until it worked. Got my data off, and its ok now. However, I've been forced to around 1 reinstall every 2 days because I had a slightly..... faulty... version of Windows.

I suggest for the average user, a reinstall every 4 to 6 months is a good thing.

[Thorsson]

As I write I have just analysed my C drive (windows only) using Diskeeper. It tells me that defragging my hd will give a 48% improvement for read times of defragmented files. (and a 3% improvement for all files) with a moderately fragmented drive of 1.05 fragments per file.

Well Diskeeper is a commercial defragging program so it's hardly likely to be unbiased is it? 48% is a complete load of bo**ox.

Here, look at this review, one that actually ran some tests, rather than believing the diskeeper bull. Look at the 3DMark2001 Benchmark. It actually ran faster with a fragmented drive than after running diskeeper.

http://www.sysopt.com/reviews/diskeeper/index2.html

The world is full of sheep. Dare to think for yourself...

[weebroonieuk]

well i prefer my own experiences and i can feel a majour difference when i have defragged my laptop and also my main pc

im quite sure we could also dig out benchmarks where they prove it does help to defrag
but then since when did benchmarks become repeatable and 100% accurate and trustworthy ?

[iranu]

From the above linky.

Conclusions

Benchmarks seem to show Diskeeper 9 offering a slightly better file system improvement compared to the XP defragmenter. The improvement comes at a cost of slower completion time. The true value of Diskeeper is value-added features, such as boot-time mode MFT and swap-file optimization, SmartScheduling, and the ability to run only while the screensaver is running. Using the "Set It and Forget It" feature, your drive should stay in peak form, never again requiring hours of manual defragmentation.

Baaaa

[0iD]

I'm with iranu, I use Diskeeper to keep my work PC's 'tidy'. Saves me having to manual defrag people's PC's when they become too cluttered. De-fragging certainly speeds up CAD work, if you're working from the local drive in Pro/E or Solid Works, (less so for Autocad).

At home I've been using O&O Defrag which is also a quality proggy.

[suryad]

Holy cow those go-l systems are sick!! Sorry to be way off-topic!

[davidstone28]

I don't know why you're reformatting, using driver cleaners etc etc

The most productive method in my view is to use something like Ghost or Acronis DriveImage to create several disk images with different levels of software configurations, drivers, service packs and / or data.

That way if you want to revert to an earlier 'clean' installation, you can just restore an earlier image which you know is fully working and has all your required applications, drivers and patches installed.

Seems far more that sensible that installing XP and then spending an age installing appications, configuring drivers, installing patches etc

Money spent on drive imaging software is money very well spent in my view.

[0iD]

Good point, I do indeed keep an image of a fresh XP install for my home Pc for such occasions. Restore image, patch up-to-date, latest drivers (if any), re-create image. Job's a good'un.

[Spunkey]

sorry to go slightly OT, but can Ghost software create a single image of multiple discs?

[iranu]

davidstone28 - that's a crackin' tip m8.

Me thinks I should do that asap. I think a friend used casper xp to ghost 20 machines for his mobile lan gaming business, so will check that out.

[weebroonieuk]

the reason i dont use ghost really is because every time i feel its time to get back to basics with my installation theres new drivers for everything anyway

so i just use nlite and make a custom xp cd and install the drivers and remove all the xp nonsense before i reach the desktop

[Thorsson]

From the above linky.

Conclusions

Benchmarks seem to show Diskeeper 9 offering a slightly better file system improvement compared to the XP defragmenter. The improvement comes at a cost of slower completion time. The true value of Diskeeper is value-added features, such as boot-time mode MFT and swap-file optimization, SmartScheduling, and the ability to run only while the screensaver is running. Using the "Set It and Forget It" feature, your drive should stay in peak form, never again requiring hours of manual defragmentation.

Baaaa

Exactly. Despite the evidence of their own tests, which show results that are statistically the same, they followed the diskeeper marketing like sheep.

And what about those wonderful added features? Fixed swap files don't need defragging, and my and many other computers work 24/7 so have to be deliberately stopped to run a defrag. How much time does that waste? Just to save an odd second here or there - possibly. And that test wasn't even run on the fastest HDs...

Oh, and the state of my HD - well according to the cut down diskeeper that ships with XP, it's 10% fragmented and has 2 MFT fragments. Big deal.

[DANZO]

I use windows 2000,windows xp pro and linux.My xp machaine starts to get cloged up really easy so i reformatt it once every 2 months my 2000 machaine get reformatted every 6 months and my linux machaine nevers needs to get reformatted as i dont intall much on it at all.

[Tomahawk]

I usually try to do it around 6months. .Just because after that it has loads of rubbish which I don't actually use and its easier just to backup a couple of files than go through and manually delete all the nonsense..

Have just formatted a few days ago actually. .Just re-installing parts of my system in next couple days.. like drivers etc .. (juggling system rebuild with coursework and revision and all the other rubbish school forces you to do !)