What to Do Before You Reformat Your Hard Drive

Computers play a very important role in our lives today. Almost everyone is now familiar with computers and there are even some that perceive computers as an indispensable part of their daily routine. However, just like any machine, computers are subject to wear and tear and you may need to reformat your hard drive at some later point in time. Before you reformat, there are several things which you need to know and do first.

Reformatting the hard drive is what others call the hard option, and this should only be done as a last resort and not mainly taken out of whim. If you are using Windows XP and having the problems such as frequent “blue screen of death” occurrences, missing DLL errors and constant software crashes even after you have performed steps including virus or spyware scanning, defrag, chkdsk, and all other solutions which are available online or on the manual, then you probably need to reformat the hard disk. In short, when you have done everything other than bathing your PC with soap and water, then it is time to consider a reformat.

Before you take out that Windows XP installation CD out that you bought a couple of years back and start the reformatting process, it is always a good idea to create a backup of the important files on your PC. There are several ways to do this, but the simplest form is just to copy all your important files to a high-capacity flash drive or an external hard disk drive.

If you forgot where you put that driver disk that came along with your computer, you should first check the device drivers on your PC by clicking start, then run, and type in dxdiag. It will show you three most important devices on your PC and these are the display, sound, and network devices. You need to take the information that appears under drivers or the name of the device on a piece of paper and then store it in a safe place.

Once you are done with backing up your files and taking note of the drivers, you can now begin the reformat by putting the Windows CD into the tray and rebooting the computer. If your computer comes with a recovery CD, reformatting and installation of some application software would be much easier. Once done, you will notice a significant boost in the performance of your computer. It will be as if the computer that you had when you first opened the box.