How often do you reformat? (need help/advice)

[Davey]

This has been bugging me for a while - how often do (you think you'll) need to reformat your system? I'm trying to plan a lifecycle for my new computer, and if possible, I'd like to minimize maintenance as much as possible but still get as much performance as I can.

I'll try to explain my situation as best as I can: when I ran Windows XP on my old laptop, I reformatted at least once every year or so to prevent my registry from becoming too bloated, because my old laptop didn't have very much power or storage space; the only workaround was to install what I needed and take it off as quickly as I finished, usually reinstalling the apps I had removed to free up the space I used in the first place, defragmenting and doing a complete reformat on a weekly basis. I don't have that problem so much anymore because I bought a better computer and I was sure to buy a case with extra space for more hard drives, although I expect those issues will crop up soon enough.

But now times have changed; I dual boot Debian and Windows Vista, and I intend to tri-boot (or leave Debian for) FreeBSD once I find a way to compile the Nvidia display drivers for FreeBSD x64, so reinstalling the OS probably won't be a 'simply pop the disk in and push the button' affair anymore. That's why if I'm going to do this, I'd better be smart about it.

So, uh... help anyone? Any reccomendations?

Also - Linux/BSD users, what're your experiences with Linux and BSD's resistance to software rot? Reformatting Windows is easy because I keep Windows on a separate hard drive entirely, but I want to avoid reinstalling and rebuilding any *nix unless I really, really have to.

[phongn]

This has been bugging me for a while - how often do (you think you'll) need to reformat your system? I'm trying to plan a lifecycle for my new computer, and if possible, I'd like to minimize maintenance as much as possible but still get as much performance as I can.

I generally only installed a new operating system when I had new hardware or there was some catastrophic corruption or error. There is no point in planning reformats for a personal computer and it is a waste of your time.

I'll try to explain my situation as best as I can: when I ran Windows XP on my old laptop, I reformatted at least once every year or so to prevent my registry from becoming too bloated, because my old laptop didn't have very much power or storage space; the only workaround was to install what I needed and take it off as quickly as I finished, usually reinstalling the apps I had removed to free up the space I used in the first place, defragmenting and doing a complete reformat on a weekly basis. I don't have that problem so much anymore because I bought a better computer and I was sure to buy a case with extra space for more hard drives, although I expect those issues will crop up soon enough.

"Registry bloat" usually isn't. Also, what the hell? I ran XP on a P3M-650/320MB/20GB machine without resorting to insane reformatting and defragmentation schedules.

Also - Linux/BSD users, what're your experiences with Linux and BSD's resistance to software rot? Reformatting Windows is easy because I keep Windows on a separate hard drive entirely, but I want to avoid reinstalling and rebuilding any *nix unless I really, really have to.

Define "software rot". As for Linux, you can run into dependancy hell.

[General Zod]

Once a year? Fuck that. I only reinstall if the system becomes so corrupted that it's impossible to work with. Unless you're totally ADD about installing new software there's really no reason to worry about things like "registry rot".

[Bounty]

My Ubuntu partition gets reformatted about once a year when a new big release arrives, mostly because it's easier than relying on the always-broken updater. Settings are stored in the home folder anyway so it's just a matter of installing, pointing everything to the right place and ticking a few boxes in Synaptic. My current install is 8.04 and it's been chugging along nicely for a year now with no age issues whatsoever.

My XP partition gets wiped... dunno, whenever I break something and don't feel like hunting down the problem, or want to try out another OS and need the space. It's a completely vanilla install with Office and a few games, so reinstalling takes no time or effort at all.

[Batman]

XP gets reinstalled (and reformatted and AGAIN reinstalled after the Fix Existing Installation option didn't work-you know what they say, Hope springs eternal ) when it breaks beyond repair.
For me, XP ran from late '02 (original install) until late '07 with no problems and minimal maintenance (and I'm LOUSY about keeping my system clean), and the reason I had to reinstall back then was the system HDD croaking, not any problems with the OS.
95 I'd reinstall every 6-9 months because back then Registry Bloat/Registry Rot WERE a problem, as was fragmentation, but with XP, unless you actually NOTICE any problems I'd go with NTARS.

[Drooling Iguana]

I've had an Ubuntu partition going for a couple of years now, and while I haven't run into any dependency problems (they really aren't much of a factor in modern Linux distros as long as you install most of your stuff through the package manager) I have encountered a few glitches due to old configuration files for new programs and various kludges I had to perform to get thing working in the past that are now handeled automatically. There's no real hard-and-fast rule for when to perform re-installs but once every year and a half or so would be recommended.

Not sure about Windows as I rarely boot into my XP partition these days (Wine is getting surprisingly good.)

[Ryan Thunder]

This has been bugging me for a while - how often do (you think you'll) need to reformat your system?

Never, if you're taking care of it.

As an absolute last resort, otherwise.

[Stark]

I haven't reformatted for maintenance in 5-6 years. My two recent reformats were moving to Vista and then moving to Vista-64 (which might have been an upgrade, I'm not even sure). Aside from moving to Windows 7 I don't forsee a need to format beyond me breaking shit.

[Beowulf]

I haven't reinstalled Vista on my desktop since... ever. I only ever installed it once. I've reinstalled Vista only once on my laptop, and that was to do an upgrade to Ultimate (and clean the bloat off the system from the default install).

[Thanas]

I actually have an image of my partition that gives me a clean new system in 10 minutes max. However, as I have not run into any problem, it has only been used once in the last five years.

I do defrag the hard drive about half a year, though.

[Starglider]

Never. I used to go through the registry once a year or so with the RegEdit tool and delete anything that looks like junk. The only bit that really matters is the Run and RunOnce part of Windows/CurrentVersion, which is usually where pointless startup processes go. These days I use WinPatrol on Vista which is a more convenient way of spotting and stripping unwanted crap.

NTFS (which you should be using on any Windows system from 2000 onwards) generally does not need defragmenting unless your disk is over 80% full.

On the servers, I have never needed to reinstall Debian, the updater works fine.

[Davey]

Gah. I hit preview and all these replies pop up!

"Registry bloat" usually isn't. Also, what the hell? I ran XP on a P3M-650/320MB/20GB machine without resorting to insane reformatting and defragmentation schedules.

I honestly have no idea. It could be DRM drivers left over from computer games, it could've been stuff I didn't know how to remove at the time and removed wrong, it could have been the bloatware that shipped with the pre-installed version that left traces of itself - that's what I mean by software rot. I really don't know, but unfortunately that computer's fried so I can't go back to confirm. I'll try to fix it up this summer and see if I can find any answers. Since I didn't connect to the net much back then and kept only to sites I knew when I did, I don't think it was spyware, but if it had been, back then I wouldn't have known how to remove it.

Anyway, when installing all your systems, do yourself a favor and take this advice: minimize the number of partitions!

Got it. My (current, Vista) laptop has a Windows and Ubuntu partition, but on my desktop has several hard drives. I hope that wouldn't make too much of a difference.

FreeBSD

Not completely on topic, but why? If you've seen one *nix, you've seen them all.

Yeah, I guess, but I did want to give it a shot. I heard lots of things about it. I figured I'd try out the different operating systems, learn about how they work, and pick one that I like. So far I have gone from Solaris 10 to Ubuntu to Debian. I like Debian the best so far but I'd like to see what BSD has to offer.

The biggest problem I've faced on the new computer is filling up the hard drive with random files. [cut]
And since my drive isn't full anymore, all this is irrelevant, since disk space used doesn't really have any significant impact on general performance.

Righto, I'll keep a note of that.

The only bit that really matters is the Run and RunOnce part of Windows/CurrentVersion, which is usually where pointless startup processes go. These days I use WinPatrol on Vista which is a more convenient way of spotting and stripping unwanted crap.

Thanks, I will check it out when I'm back on Windows.

The advice is appreciated, I won't reformat on a schedule. Whew. Thanks guys, you've saved me a lot of time, headaches and trouble.

[Thanas]

NTFS (which you should be using on any Windows system from 2000 onwards) generally does not need defragmenting unless your disk is over 80% full.

As I am using a dual boot system with Win98SE, I keep two of my four partitions in FAT. There is no purpose to it other than to run a few legacy games and a very old databank program though.

[Ryan Thunder]

NTFS (which you should be using on any Windows system from 2000 onwards) generally does not need defragmenting unless your disk is over 80% full.

As I am using a dual boot system with Win98SE, I keep two of my four partitions in FAT. There is no purpose to it other than to run a few legacy games and a very old databank program though.

Destructionator mentioned virtual machines, which reminded me that you can use them to run that without having to dual boot. Just a thought.

[Batman]

While I heartily approve of using VMs over actually keeping Win9x around, that doesn't always work. (Nor does it for DOS VMs).
Sometimes, that's not an option.
@Destro: While I absolutely agree that having more partitions than you need is pointless why would keeping the number of partitions to a minimum be desirable from a TECHNOLOGICAL point of view? Especially as the number of partitions you need is, frankly, a matter of taste?

[Netko]

It is because there is much less "wasted" free space (for example, if your system partition 2% free space, for the following the fact that your data partition is 50% free means jack and shit), which increases the possibility that various background processes like defragmenting, shadow copies, system restore, recycle bin etc. can function without having to enter low disk space modes which tend to be much less optimal from both a capability standpoint (in a low disk space state your shadow copies die for example) and performance standpoint (the defragmenter works much more poorly without about 20% free space). For those reasons it is much preferable to have a single, or at worst two partitions in cases where you don't have a backup solution in place (or, of course, one partition per drive) so that there is the least possible chance of the low disk space situation happening.

As for the OP, my only reformat on my personal computers (that is, computers with me having sole admin access) in the past 3-4 years has been when I bought a bad stick of RAM thus corrupting a bunch of files and, thus, being forced to kill the system to make sure the corruption is removed. Hmm... actually, there was also that dead mobo on my home server and the two or three RC->RTM reinstalls, but other then those circumstances where a reinstall was unavoidable, I haven't had the need to do any.

[Davey]

You might want to look into setting up virtual machines on one of your main operating systems. [cut]

Hey, that's a great idea. I think I'll try virtualizing FreeBSD on Linux, then.

I like dual booting because that way if one of my operating systems should ever suddenly decide to piss itself, keel over and die, I can still go into the other operating system, mount the other hard disk and find my files. Gives me a little extra security.
I don't think I could handle a tri-boot though.

[DesertFly]

You might want to look into setting up virtual machines on one of your main operating systems. [cut]

Hey, that's a great idea. I think I'll try virtualizing FreeBSD on Linux, then.

I like dual booting because that way if one of my operating systems should ever suddenly decide to piss itself, keel over and die, I can still go into the other operating system, mount the other hard disk and find my files. Gives me a little extra security.
I don't think I could handle a tri-boot though.

Linux live cds work great for this as well, with the additional protection that you can still boot if your hard drive has had some damage (Ubuntu live saved my bacon recently).

[Xon]

@Destro: While I absolutely agree that having more partitions than you need is pointless why would keeping the number of partitions to a minimum be desirable from a TECHNOLOGICAL point of view? Especially as the number of partitions you need is, frankly, a matter of taste?

Partitions maximize seektimes, and thus make the entire disk slower.

By partitioning, it will force a new MFT/FAT structure which windows will then avoid writing near (it tries to give a percentage headroom around the start of the disk/partition). This furthur artificially increases the distance between commonly used files on the partitions. Seeking furthur takes longer (since the physical read/write heads need to travel a longer distance).

And if you really want to trash windows performance, put the OS disk and/or the disk with the paging file under high load (lots of small random reads) and watch as the entire OS stutters to a standstill.

[Isil`Zha]

Once a year? Fuck that. I only reinstall if the system becomes so corrupted that it's impossible to work with. Unless you're totally ADD about installing new software there's really no reason to worry about things like "registry rot".

I'm with this mentality.

I see no reason to format unless a) it's irrecoverable, or b) fixing it is more time and effort than restoring - restoring including all the shit you've saved on there, and that weighs a lot on the decision to format:

1) I don't want to have to not only reinstall apps, but have to reset settings.
and more importantly -
2) Shit you can't recover - pictures, saved documents, bookmarks that you rarely use but are glad you've kept around, ect.

Therefore, the cost for "b" is so high that "a" is really the only viable option.

[Starglider]

And if you really want to trash windows performance, put the OS disk and/or the disk with the paging file under high load (lots of small random reads) and watch as the entire OS stutters to a standstill.

This is why it's worth buying an SSD as your OS/apps disk, even though it doesn't really make sense to keep your media and games (at least, ones you don't play often) on one.