[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?

[Golden Eagle]

It takes a bit level "snapshot" of your hard drive. When you restore, the system will be *exactly* as it was at the moment of the backup.

[Golden Eagle]

Note: this approach means you backup your system immediately after you load the O/S and all your typical apps. You can do backups after that, as something like Acronis will not only do an image backup it will allow individual file restores, but when you restore, you restore back to that original backup, that doesn't include any crud you might have picked up since then. It basically saves you the steps of reformatting, reloading the O/S, and reloading your apps.

[dennisw]

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?

I've installed Ghost on 3 computers. To restore from a back up takes 5-10 minutes. You can store your backup on your hard drive in partition D or a USB external drive. You restore, reformat C with it

IMHO A good image to have for restoration purposes is XP with all the updates and 6-10 of your most useful programs. Get your XP installation nice and stable and then back it up. Takes perhaps 3-4 gigabytes. Ghost 10 is great for this doesn't work with Win 98. But I think Ghost 9 (Ghost 2003) will backup an XP system and '98. I use Ghost 10.0

Free 15 day trail if download from Norton-Symantec

[VeniVidiVici]

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