Formatting

I am wondering if there is anyway to format my HD with saving alot of the data I have on it, like pictures, music, drivers, windows settings and stuff like that. Is there a way to just totally delete anything i dont want to keep, and gaining some of my PC's old 'out of the box' speed back?.

Windows Hardware 9627 This topic was started by ,


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200 Posts
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Joined 2004-11-22
I am wondering if there is anyway to format my HD with saving alot of the data I have on it, like pictures, music, drivers, windows settings and stuff like that. Is there a way to just totally delete anything i dont want to keep, and gaining some of my PC's old 'out of the box' speed back?

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1457 Posts
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Joined 2001-12-18
Formatting your hard drive will destroy or eradicate all of the files on your hard drive. So the answer is that you would not retain anything unless your saved your files to some other media like a CD or another hard drive.
 
I take it that your machine is slower than it used to be. Clean installing Windows is one of the ways that many recommend in order to speed up their machines. When you have a lot of data, you will have to save it first before doing this procedure. It is a pretty time consuming task. And, keep in mind that you will have to re-apply all of Microsoft's security patches.
 
You might try defragging your hard drive first. I would purchase either O&O or Perfect disk. O&O would allow you to defrag it according to several ways of sorting. And you if you use O&O you might want to download a free program like SysInternals PageDefrag to resort the hives of your registry. Perfect Disk will also Page Defrag as part of its method of defragging your hard drive. You might also want to use a registry cleaner and get it to remove entries in the registry from programs that have left behind residue after you have uninstalled them.
 
Personally, when a machine seems to be slower than I remember it, it is usually time to get a faster machine. Depends on your budget.

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200 Posts
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Joined 2004-11-22
OP
Thanks! I have a fairly nice PC at the moment, but am in the works of building a new one.
Current: Intel Celeron 2.8 ghz
1024 MB Samsung pc 2700 ram
160 GB Seagate HD 7200 rpm
GeForce MX4000 128 MB Video Card
Abit not so hot MoBo and 400w PS
I think it is slowing down mainly because i have alot of files on here, and running a soon to be 'old school' PCI slot video card with today's games makes it seem very slow sometimes.
 
I just ordered a barebones kit from TigerDirect with PCI-e slot and an agp 8x slot, with an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ processor and 1GB of Crucial memory. Should be a nice pc when im done with it, considering the barebones with an Ultra Wizard case was only 300 bucks.

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0 Posts
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Joined 2005-10-25
Hello,
 
[censored] DataRecoveryWizard utility can help. Speaking about me, it was
easily able to restore deleted, lost file and unformat drive,
so I think you will also find it quite useful. Really recommended
tool, give it a try.
 
http://www.[censored].com/

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4 Posts
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Joined 2006-01-28
You can try deletring the files in
c:\windows\prefetch
also go for an defrag.
delete all the files in prefetch and you'll be up and running.