I want to format my C drive which is split in to two sctions (C & E) C drive has Windows and program files on it mostly. Is there any way I can back up the program files without losing them when I format the drive? I also have a D drive that has enough space to store both C & E drives on it while they are getting formatted. I'm completely lost with this situation. I really need to format the harddrive because this PC keeps crashing. Yakumo
What you're looking to do is "Partition" your drive. You'll want to use something like Partition Magic, which is pretty much the best tool for this... at least it was last time I partitioned a Windows HD... about 3-4 years ago. Look around the net for it. It's pretty self-explanatory, and as far as I know (which might be wrong) it can keep your C:\drive in tact, and partition E:\ as long as you're keeping the filesystem in tact, although I think this is a waste of time. In my experience, a physical hard drive dying (which fucks both partitions) is far more probably than any software mishap rendering only one of them useless. Gaijin Punch's favorite Windows setup? Besides the bin, two big ass drives. C:\ holds the system files and crap, D:\holds the important stuff.
You could problably just back up the whole C/E drive onto D, then format C/E, but it'll be a pain in the ass process. Better solution it seems- back up all the stuff you want onto CDs or other removable media, make Drive D the new C drive and install windows onto it and ditch the screwy C/D drive all together, or make it a slave afterwards and remove files that way.
You could use Norton Ghost to create an image of your hard drive before you format it, then after you have wiped and partitioned it, reload the image and it is back like it was. Only problem with that, is if it was crashing before, it will probably still do it as its all but unchanged.
i'd reccomend, putting all your data on a seperate hard drive or on cd-r/ dvd-r and then totaly formatting the hard drive and doing a fresh install of all programs, and then putting back all your documents etc so you have a nice clean system.
Word up! Totally forgot about that. In this day and age of penis enlargement endorsing emails, Norton Ghost is about the best $70 you can spend on your computer.
Norton ghost is good, but it's propably the software on the pc + the current windows install that's causing the problem so doing a format and then putting back the exact same system won't solve the problem.
I think formatting your whole drive to get rid of a gone-haywire Windows install is very overrated... a new install of Windows doesnt give a hunk of shit that for instance your MP3's are still on the drive, it just doesnt do anything with them... all I do is deltree \windows, and mostly (but not always) \program files and \documents and settings too, and it works fine for me and saves me a lot of hassle :smt023
Yeah, thats why I said if it crashed before it probably still will do. What it does do however, is it does one hell of a defrag job. You would be amazed what an effect doing a ghost image, and re-load can do to a system.
Partition Magic is one of the best programs to partition your HD. It can do everything you want, and it has a flash tutorial to show you how to do it. I think the last version is number 8
Before you go ahead and reformat, there's several things to check out. Check your CPU temp, if it's above 50C start getting worried. Same goes for the motherboard temp. Add some fans or get a better case. Check your 5V line in the bios. If it's below 4.8/4.9, you'll be getting system instability. A lot of people buy cheap shitty PSUs and end up with unreliable PCs as a result. This can't be stressed enough, especially if (as I think is the case) your PC is running as a server with a number of peripherals/hard drives/fans sucking up the juice. Whatever PC you have, getting a nice beefy PSU is a good idea. Spending £100 now is better than having a dead/dodgy PSU on your hands. Also do the normal system maintenance stuff, empty the recycle bin/temp/temporary internet files, do a virus scan, defrag... Try out Norton System Utilities (sometimes called windoctor). If after all this your system still plays up, then a format is probably a good idea. Hope this helps.
Hell, I would be worried if my CPU ran below 50C, my PC runs at about 48 idle, never had a heat problem, but then again, im using an early AMD Athlon XP, and they run fine hot. All this case fan stuff is a waste of time if you just keep sticking them in the back. You need an air intake on the front to allow a decent flow. One in the back one in the front ideally. Maybe get one of those CD-ROM bay intake ports, they have a nice dust filter as well to prevent your system getting gummed up inside. Stick too many fans in without a decent intake, and the air gets sucked through your CD/DVD drives and kills them over time. Seen it a hundred times!
... :smt043 Yeah that is pretty much anyone using the stock AMD HSF... You don't need to spend anywhere near £100 to get a good power supply. Sparkle/Fortron, OCZ and Antec all make good PSU's as well as PC Power and Cooling but they are not really worth it unless you have money to extra cash to waste. The OCZ PSU's have a 3 year warranty, manual voltage adjustment knobs on the back and are known to be VERY stable. The Fortron and Sparkle PSU's are made by the same company and also have rail adjustment knobs but they are located inside the PSU itself.
Yakumo: Don't forget the obvious: 1: Ccheck for virii. What are the symptoms (other than 'crashing')? Any error messagse? If there are, put them into Google verbatim, and you'll likely come up w/ a solution. 2: Getting rid of spyware on a weekly basis is common sense these days. Spybot and Ad-aware should keep your system clean 3: Uh... you're not donig anything stupid are ya?
Thanks for all the help guys. I'm going to put some of the suggestions in to practice. My PC isn't running too hot since it's well ventilated with back and side mounted fans. And I run Spybot every other day to get rid of those nasty programs. I also empty the recycle bin practically every time I put something in it :smt045 But there is one item in there that won't delete. It shows up as not being there but every time I empty the recycle bin it says that this MPEG file can't be removed. When you look in to the bin though, there's nothing there. This is a real pain in the arse. Mostly my PC will just freeze. This possibly could be conflicting software but there doesn't seem to be any pattern. The hard drive that runs windows and program files is about 4 years old now and has never been formatted. That's why I thought it would be a good idea to format it. Of course it's been defragged many times. Yakumo
You use Windows XP right? That's a very known bug. There are some workarounds to solve this. One of them is: 1) open the CMD; 2) Close explorer.exe in Task Manager; 3) delete the file via CMD; 4) In the Task Manager, go File -> Run new task -> type 'Explorer' in there Apparently this bug happens with video files because Windows Media Player is trying to make a preview of it to show on Explorer, even though you might not have this option enabled
I wouldn't recommend these two at all; they miss far too much. SpySweeper is a much better choice, and even the demo wil pick up on stuff the full version of AdAware won't.
Finally went with just formatting the C: drive. Pain in the arse though because I had to re-install everything. that wasn't so bad until I couldn't find have the CDs to install all the cards and so on. Spent about 5 hours or so getting it back on track. Anyway, all problems are sorted now and even the PC runs a bit smother. Yakumo
