Formatting my Hard drive

[stoory]

I've recently had a bit of bother with my computer, crashing, becoming slow etc and was considering formatting my hard-drive to 'refresh' it again while it still works.  I'll make sure and burn all my files to CD first but how do i go about it and is this the best way to give my computer a new lease of life??  I'm running XP.

thanks. Stoory

[Impret-Sir]

AS this is a rather drastic step, before you do this, have you tried defragmenting it? This will often speed it up if you havent done it for a few months.

[stevie21]

I think formatting your hard drive once every year or two is a good idea. For one, it prompts you to back up valuable info to a safe place. Ideally, you'll get into the habit of storing there as a first step rather than as an emergency backup. after having just saved it somewhere and forgotten about it

Also, this gets rid of the unbelievable amount of crap that all PCs get clogged up with.
Just remember to reinstall all of the standard software likwe antivirus, firewall and all of the Windows Updates (you may want to get SP2 on a CD so that you can apply that before going online).