Fuck you MacAfee, fuck you.

[frog]

Put the hammer into the computer.

[M-26-7]

Give him the boot. Medium style.

[M-26-7]

Imma format my drivez.
What should I remember to put on proverbial ark? I've already got my music files, which are the most important things and unreplacable. That's about 40 gbs right there, but I think I can save all I want.

[Tachyon]

Well in my case I'd probably save the music, but likely not the movies since I could re-download most of them in a few hours. Personally I'd save all my funny images, most of them are obscure photoshops that I've been collectining for years and don't remember where they came from anymore.

[s1acker]

I'd make sure you check everything to see if you wanna save it a few times. I know every time I've had to format I ALWAYS forget to save something after it's too late.

[mr_doc]

Just delete everything. You weren't really ever going to watch all that pron.

[Raptor]

Music, important torrents, .rar everything you want to save,

Word Docs and pics. can be saved too

don't bother saving actual programs, they can be reinstalled later

[Zazen]

Why deal with backup/restore hassles if you don't have to? You don't need to format to get a clean install. Just choose not to reformat when you install windows. It'll wipe out C:\windows but all your other files will remain and the install will be just as fresh.

[Nod]

You can get a five hundred gig external USB drive from WesternDigital for about a hundred and fifty bucks. Be damned if I can get mine to recognize more than two hundred and thirty gigs of it though.

[mr_doc]

You can get a 500GB acomdata external drive for $99 or so

And if you reinstall windows in a different folder you start with a clean registry so you would have to install your programs again anyways. Might as well just format and do it cleanly

[Nod]

Since this thread is now about externals:

Can I partition my external safely with all my stuff on it? If so, how? I checked out the instructions on WD's website but it said something about "making sure there is nothing of importance on the drive" before doing it. That would be about 200 gigs of movies, pr0n, images, etc. that I have no where else to put. in b4 g00gl3 muhfucka. (I did)

[Zazen]

And if you reinstall windows in a different folder you start with a clean registry so you would have to install your programs again anyways. Might as well just format and do it cleanly

It's not any cleaner, just easier for some people to think about. I guess it's OK to do if you are super-organized about your files and have an easy backup method and some extra time, but you'll just end up with exactly the same result anyway. If you're not that organized then you're likely to lose some stuff.

[ataxicwolf]

Since this thread is now about externals:

Can I partition my external safely with all my stuff on it? If so, how? I checked out the instructions on WD's website but it said something about "making sure there is nothing of importance on the drive" before doing it. That would be about 200 gigs of movies, pr0n, images, etc. that I have no where else to put. in b4 g00gl3 muhfucka. (I did)

I actually did this yesterday. Rather than pirating partition magic or some B$ like that, you can use Gparted. It's completely open-source and boots into a live CD. You can partition any of your drives without losing any data. It's really awesome and easy to use. Here's the link:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

I actually have the most complicated Hard drive setup ever. I have all but 10 gigs of my internal dedicated to Linux, those last 10 are for the installation of Windows XP Pro, then I have an external drive with 40 Gigs dedicated to extra space for Windows XP Pro, 10 Gigs of NTFS partition for extracting files > 4 Gigs, and 10 Gigs of another installation of Linux. Whew. It's hard to keep up with.

[m0rdekai]

Just download the Hirus Boot cd.  Its free, and it has a buttload of usefull stuff.

[Nod]

If it requires a boot cd I can't use it. For some reason my computer doesn't support booting from anything but the master hard drive. It's supposed to be able to boot from the CD Drive and says that it can. But it doesn't. Whatever method would require me to do it from within windows. I should have been more specific. But it seems like your answer was yes, I can partition my drive without losing all my porn.