secure drive format

[dcyphure 0]

i've developed a habbit of some sort of wanting to secure format and reinstall windows alot, like almost once a month, i got drive image 2002 and i clone my partition and try to use that, but after a couple months if i use it i would have to update programs and so i'll usually wind up formatting, reinstalling and update everything then clone it, and the process repeats, i'm tired of doing it but cant stop, its the only way i feel my hard drive is completely clean and updated and better performing...i wondered if anyone else has this problem or does this just make good security practice even though i'm the only user.

 

i tend to install and uninstall alot of programs plus i video edit which means i wind up deleting alot of large files and tend to make windowsxp somewhat slower, i shred all my deleted data using system shield and other cleaning utilities and defrag often which is good housekeeping but i always wind up secure formatting and reinstalling windows and i hate it. but in my mind i feel my hard drive is cleaner...is using a drive clone program and system shield afterwards make my drive just as clean?

is drive image 2002 as good as any other drive cloneing prog?

if not which is best and why

[Tomay 0]

If something doesn't break I don't reinstall windows. But I change my computers alot so when I get a new one or a new HDD I do a fresh install.

[thatsteveguy 0]

I'm the same. I tend to re-install 2-3 times per year and yes even an image after awhile needs to be updated.

someimes your best bet is to just make a basic image (install and include drivers that don't change that often ie. nic card latest service pak)then instead of re-installing you can re-image and then just update the other stuff after.

 

I use drive image as well and I think it's great, and fast.

 

S

[Sybex 0]

I think that Norton Ghost is the one that do the dirty job.

I've heard that you are able to clone your drive with all the updates and shi*.

[duhmez 0]

1 fresh install for each PC I build. I install latest service pack and no video driver. Then I ghost it.

 

If somehting goes terribly wrong I ghost it back. I keep desktop on d: and email on d: and swapfile and %temp% paths all on d: too. Favorites are also on d:

When i ghost c: I lose nothing that I added, like favorites, email etc. Painless.

I keep the c: image small (~1 gig) on a fat32 partition, and ghost.exe on c:.

 

Dos win2k dual boot so no floppy needed, boot into dos, run c:\ghost and in 5 minutes, literaly, my machine is good to go. (Since ghost.exe is on c:, after a ghost it is always handy....)

c: therefor if fat32 as well. (3 gig partition)

 

All the rest of my drives (500 gig or so worth) are NTFS.