I think I built this new Win 11 computer sometime before the pandemic.

In the last ten years, I have found it beneficial to format the drive and start over every two or three years.

Is this logical?

This time I want to replace the C drive with a larger drive on the MB.

I was thinking of using this 2 TB drive.

SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 Gaming M.2 Internal Solid State Drive Memory Card + 2mo Adobe CC Photography, Maximum Speed, Thermal Control (MZ-V8P2T0B)

This is the current system.
Win9x:NO 64Bit:YES GiveIO:NO SpeedFan:YES
I/O properly initialized
Linked ISA BUS at $0290
Scanning ISA BUS at $0290...
Found WDC WD10SDRW-34A0XS0 on AdvSMART
Found Samsung SSD 860 QVO 1TB on AdvSMART
Found WDC WD10EALS-00Z8A0 on AdvSMART
Found SCSI drive SSD (1000.2GB)
ProbeSCSI: WARNING: hard disk skipped because of invalid returned LogSense data
Found SCSI drive WD10EALS-00Z8A0 (1000.2GB)
ProbeSCSI: WARNING: hard disk skipped because of invalid returned LogSense data
Found SCSI drive Samsung SSD 970 (1000.2GB)
Found SCSI drive Expansion HDD (2000.4GB)
Found SCSI drive easystore 2648 (1000.2GB)
Found System manufacturer System Product Name
Found ACPI temperature
Found Radeon RX 570 Series
Found Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz
End of detection
Loaded 0 events

Thoughts?



Billy

I generally develop enough of a problem in that time frame that I choose to start over, rather than wait for any schedule.

My drives are very similar to what you propose. Great choice. My CPU is also similar.

Thanks, Matt

There is a 4 TB drive also. It is by WD, called Iron Horse, as I recall.

There is a fair amount of software that only writes to the C drive.



Programs seem to continue to get larger.


Thanks, again

Billy

I like to wipe/upgrade the C:\ drive every two years or so as well. Nice to have a clean system.

Thanks, Steve

My system is becoming a bit unstable. Time to start fresh.

Billy

There was a guy back in the day on the old legacy Cakewalk forum who reformatted and reinstalled everything every year. He said it cleared out all the garbage that gets written to files that take up space on the drive. I think he copied the data off to a portable drive and then let it rip.

Only one time did I ever have to rework a C drive..... I was running out of space IIRC, so I got a new, much larger drive and it came with cloning software. The cloning was very fast... I think it was done in around 15 minutes. I only had to reinstall 2 of the operational programs and it was back up and running without anything major.

phones, computers, they're all the same. They seem to fill up with something that eats up hard drive space. Yet, when you go in to clear up space, in most cases you pick up a couple hundred MB of real estate and most of the space seems to be out of touch totally. I believe the computer companies put software in the OS that writes random invisible files simply to eat up space so you have to upgrade every so often. I have reset some of my phones and computer laptops to the FACTORY RESET and they came back up running like new. Of course.... everything on them was wiped.

Well, the new 980 Pro arrived today. The bad news is now I have to do a bunch of work I have been putting off for some time now.

Sorting out what I want to keep in software and what I don't need will be a project/work/PITB.

I don't have much choice because the stability issues are getting worse.

Billy

I rebuild my software installation every couple of years. I have all my installation software on an external drive along with an installation spreadsheet and accompanying word document that describles the installation process for each app (and I've got way more apps than anyone needs, but you never know). I keep the drive up to date as I install updates along the way. The spreadsheet also has all my activation codes and login information. I also have a list of all the apps that need de-activation before starting the process.

This has allowed me to keep my desktop and laptop pretty well in sync (configuration-wise), so if one dies, the other can pick up the work. I also use SyncTrayzor to keep data files in sync between the two boxes that are hard wired into a switch.

I have a full backup of that installation drive, and offline backups of my data, and restoration is just the time it takes to run the installs and copy the data (if needed).

This has worked great for me for many years now.

I fortunately haven't had to do this in a long time - mostly as I'm a Mac user and don't typically have major issues - but I probably ought to do a clean install on my one Windows machine. It's a home theatre and gaming machine so it doesn't get a lot of use, but it's been ~3 years since I installed it, and there are a few gremlins starting to peek out. Similarly I have a 2tb NVME drive in this machine - worth every penny!

Typically I back up and restore the entire Users folder when I do this - makes setting up programs easier, as most of the time your preferences are in there.

Glad to see you doing well Billy, and the rest of you!