Why Formatting is Good, and How to Do It
by John Madden
Disclaimer: We accept no responsibility for things that happen as a result of following the instructions in this article. This is just a newbie's outline and guide. Format at your own risk.


Why format?
You may ask yourself-- WHY would I ever want to format my hard drive? Isn't that the first thing I learned about computers? NEVER mess with formatting, because that toasts all my data? Well, yes, that probably was one of the first things you learned about your computer; formatting is bad, and toasts all of your data. That's only partially correct though. Your data does get toasted, but that's only a bad thing if you haven't backed up properly, which you've done recently anyway, right? Right?

The fact of the matter is, the more you use your computer, the more often you should take an hour or so to blow the hard drive away, and start over from scratch. I generally format my Windows PC (during times of normal use) about once every 6-8 months, and I suggest this practice for any Windows user. As you use your computer, many somewhat destructive things happen to it:

You install new programs, adding to the registry, and taking up disk space.
You may eventually decide that you no longer need this new software, and uninstall it. Unfortunately, most uninstall programs do a poor job of completely removing the program from your system. Files are left behind, scattered in various places on your drive, taking up space. Registry keys added by programs are rarely removed correctly, making for a huge, slow, inefficient registry.
You get more and more data, taking up disk space. Formatting can make you think about what's really on your disk-- what you really need, and what's just useless space-wasting.
If you don't defragment your hard drive, file fragmentation occurs, which can slow your computer to a crawl as data is being searched for.
So what can you do about it? The simplest, most effective way is to format. It does take some time, and it can be risky, but 99% of the time, it's well worth it. Before we begin though, if your PC is a Compaq or HP, please read elsewhere, as they sometimes require extra "System Disks," which can cause problems. My advice to you is: Get another computer, and don't buy Compaq, HP, or IBM.


Getting Started
Before you can go and destroy all your data, you should probably back it all up first, unless of course, your data means nothing to you, in which case, you can skip this section.

Backing up is essential. No matter how you do it, make sure you do it well. It's advisable to do it more than once, actually; put it in more than one place. You have many devices to choose from: Floppies (the least recommended), another hard drive (probably the best option), Zip disks, writeable CD's, and my personal favorite, another computer entirely.

Backup only your data, the installation files for programs you've downloaded, and anything else that you can find that you think you might need. You can't copy your c:\windows, or c:\program files (and probably some others) over-- they won't work on your computer after the format, so don't bother trying to. To backup programs, you have to have the original installation media, whether it was a zip file you downloaded from the net, or an installation CD, you need it to reinstall the software once you've put Windows back on your hard drive.

If you have unusual hardware that Windows doesn't have native support for, you'll have to have special drivers for it to get it to work fully. You usually have the option of installing windows first, and then downloading the drivers later, unless the drivers are for something like a modem or network card. If this is the case, be sure to download drivers for the hardware before formatting, and make these part of your backup.

Once you've backed up, you'll need some way of getting your computer booted to format and reinstall Windows. The most popular method is a boot disk. If you already have DOS (restart in MS-DOS mode, and try to read a CD) support for your CD-ROM, you might not need one of these, but it'll still be a good idea to have one around just in case. My personal favorite is the Windows98 startup disk, which contains cd-rom drivers for just about any drive, and includes utilities like FDISK and FORMAT. Whatever your method of gaining cd-rom access, BE SURE it WORKS before you format that hard drive.


Let's Format!
Once you've backed up, and you have CD-ROM access within DOS, you're ready to format. Boot with your disk, type "format c:" and type 'y' at the confirmation prompt. Don't be shy, just go ahead and do it. The formatting process may take a long time, so go make yourself some coffee. If you're the way I was the first time I formatted a drive, you'll need it.

Pop in your Windows CD, type "d:" and hit enter (where D is the drive letter of your cd-rom), type 'cd win95' or 'cd win98', depending on your version of windows, and hit enter. Next, run Setup by typing 'setup' and hitting enter. Windows will run through it's install procedure, and lead you through the rest of the setup process. The rest should be a fairly self-explanatory process.

You should immediately notice that your computer is a lot faster (especially if you've never formatted it before), and of course, that you have a lot of free disk space.