[Golden Eagle]

I generally reformat the hard drives on all 3 machines about once a year.

I'd say get a good image backup product like Acronis, so instead of reformating you recover from backup.

[Babu]

I generally reformat the hard drives on all 3 machines about once a year.

I'd say get a good image backup product like Acronis, so instead of reformating you recover from backup.

So what is the advantage of buying a program to do that, as opposed to just reformatting? Does that program just do the same thing that the imbedded WinXP accessorie System Restore does?