I just buy new computers and toss out old

I generally don't reformat unless I absolutely have to. I would do one on this older computer I'm on but the hard drive is on death watch notice and I'm poised for a complete network upgrade anyway, so I'll probably just scrap this one unless I decide to put in a new harddrive.

I keep my machines super clean and defragged etc at all times though, so I tend to go long periods without thinking about a reformat. But like others have said junk does tend to pile up over time. Crap. Useless forgotten programs. Even old Windows update crap. But by the time it gets that bad I'm usually thinking about getting a new unit. Like now.

There WAS a guy here on GFY who posted a while back that he reformats every 6 months. Ca-razy. But to each their own.

Yeah I understand that this makes a big difference. I personally install hardly anything on it, I don't download (stuffed) torrents, and I always do the advanced setup in the rare case I need to install something.

At least once a month.....

Once is 5 monts and i hate the same proces of Installing the programs

Depends. Seems like I did it more often with XP than now with 7.
But one difference - with win7 I also added SSD.
HDD>SSD is most important upgrade I did ever. Nothing added me that much extra joy than this upgrade.
Now when I sit on HDD machine it is painful.

And again - SSD might even be a reason why I do not reformat as often.

My suggestion - get SSD and reformat. That will be awesome feeling.

Never did it since 2000.

Had 98, XP and 7. Never needed a reformat. I did have to repair the MBR, use backups in-between harddrives changes, but I never had to format.

I did clean installs for each OS changes and everything went smoothly until their end of life.

I did change computer 3 times. Took a backup from one harddrive to the other and it was always good.

It's not that actually formatting takes much time...it's the re-install of all the software and re-setting custom preferences that becomes a PITA. Having to dig through tons of old software backup disks (where did I put that box/manual with the damn serial number again?!)

I just find it easier and quicker to use system utils to keep it tuned up.

Sly: check out a company called Yamicsoft. I've been using their products for years for every major version of windows. It's intuitive, very straightforward, lets you clean up your registry, even defrag it, finds orphaned entries, orphaned dll's, and all sorts of stuff that can degrade system performance. it also centralizes a lot of the Windows tools that let you toggle them on and off that may cause a performance hit.

Optimize Windows, Tweak Windows, Repair Windows, Clean Windows, Speed Up Windows - Yamicsoft

Don't let the simplistic looking website or product screenshots give you the wrong impression. This product is very good and well worth the money.

Never as I don't see slowdowns. :2 cents:

Never reformatted here either. Just keep it clean with a simple antivirus software and CCleaner. Always in tip-top speed!

ya me too lol

I've been running about 3 or 4 years. Everything is working so I'm not going to do anything. I run Win7 and thought about upgrading to 10, but not going to do it. I have a lot of programs that wouldn't run when I tried upgrading to Win8, so I'm leaving this main machine alone. I used to do clean installs every time a new OS came out, but pretty much don't care anymore and will just upgrade if shit works. But I don't have the time and patience to see if all my software works with a new OS. I also use an SSD drive, but only for about 2 years, then I clone it and install a new one. Don't trust them for more than 2 years.

I just had one die last Friday, and am working off my junk machine now. It wasn't like a failing HDD where you can often tell that it is going to happen. One minute it worked, the next it was gone. :(

I am not great with hardware, and I'm not sure what to get as a replacement. It was set up as a RAID, and I'm not sure how that impacts things.

But that is my technical tale of woe for the day. To answer the OP question, only when absolutely necessary. Setting up all my programs is too much of a PITA.

Since the advent of virtualization, a whole lot less.

Depends on the raid array you have set up, if it is mirrored or raid 5 try replacing the bad drive and you might get lucky.

No, it was set up for performance, not redundancy. I have the OS installed on the functioning SSD right now. I need to replace the bad one, then see if I can retrieve any data.

Fun times.

Thanks for the input though. It is much appreciated!

I totally understand you. I am the morning type. Sometimes I reformat the drive twice each morning... On good days do one in the evening too...

Anyway, formating hard disk with today's file systems is not something which is necessary. FAT and FAT32 were file systems which had benefits from re-formating. NTFS is much better and with defragmenting from time to time, you can do enough maintenance on file system itself.

Windows is story for itself, but something for registry clean and maintenance, antivirus and malware plus taking care could make your windows install once in computer lifetime. If is necessary to install windows again, it's enough to do it in new directory

Free space is big problem. Adobe products make huge cache (and plenty of people here are using at least one of their product so you know what Bridge can eat in few days only). Some other software eat space too. Couple of day I found that NetLimiter made 5GB of logs in some 15 days I was using it (last year when I was in place where connection was breaking when upload was not limited). it was lost for year or so. I found it by pure coincidence. so knowing where software and what it's doing is maybe better thing than formating the drive and starting all over again

Never ...

I only reformat when my HD is dead.

You do know that 3.5" enterprise drives are usually mechanically very similar, or even 100% identical, to consumer level drives? Often the firmware is the only difference, adding extra features such as time limited RAID recovery.

Drive failure isn't the only thing to worry about...

I had a BIOS that quietly nabbed a bunch of sectors at the end of the drive to store a copy of itself (motherboard malware!), which ended up wiping out the encryption keys for several drives. The ironic thing is that I was putting them into this machine to restore data because of a drive failure in the main array, but it ultimately killed two sets of backups. Luckily I figured out what was happening before I connected my sole remaining backup.

Be paranoid. Be very paranoid. :helpme

I keep my system pretty clean and well defragmented, so unless something goes terribly wrong I normally don't need to do it often.