What should i backup before formatting vista

One thing is almost certain now that Windows has been reinstalled -- some of the generic drivers that Windows has installed are not optimal. If you are lucky enough to have an auto-update utility from your motherboard manufacturer, install the latest version that you downloaded earlier, connect to the Internet, and fire up the update app.

I keep my apps on a separate logical drive labeled Vista x64 Apps. This is the fastest way to clean out the deadwood files that you will never use again. If you have all your apps on one logical drive and nothing else is stored there, it is best to format the logical drive before reloading your apps. Some programs like your newsreader usually store information like group messages on this logical drive. It is finally time to reload all your applications.

Take a peek at the desktop JPEG you created earlier or use a list of your core apps to determine what apps you want to install. Install to a fully formatted non-system logical drive. There are two basic strategies when reloading your apps. You can reload the apps you use the most and load additional apps when needed or load a full list of apps up front.

I prefer to load the core apps and load additional apps only when needed. Take it from experience -- it is not a good idea to load a lot of apps requiring a system restart and postpone the restart. Install a few at a time, restart the computer, and see if all is still well. If you do find a problem, you can return to the last known good restore point or uninstall the offending app.

If you find no problems, consider manually creating a new restore point. Don't forget to reload your e-mail messages, e-mail contacts, browser favorites, and other data that you exported earlier back into your newly reloaded apps. Even a casual glance at this list reveals that loading Windows is the easy part of your reinstall project. The prep work and configuration will occupy most of your time; plan the actual date and time of the install accordingly.

There is one more final bit of housekeeping to do. If you reinstalled Windows in a folder with an existing installation of Windows, you should decide what to do with the Windows.

You will not find this folder if there was insufficient space on your system partition during the Windows setup. If you are reinstalling Vista, the Windows. You can archive it to a backup drive, or if you have followed the steps carefully in this article and are satisfied that you have all your Windows-specific data, simply zap it into oblivion. By completing the 10 steps outlined here, you have prepared your computer for years of maintenance-free service. You have also protected yourself from data loss due to a hard drive failure.

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Alan Norton began using PCs in , when they were called microcomputers. Alan is currently semi-retired and starting a new career as a wri Please Note: I have gone to great care to test and retest this documentation. It is still possible that there are errors or missing information or that I have not covered your specific reinstallation configuration. Please provide feedback in the forum if you find any issues.

Before reinstallation 1. Document your login IDs, passwords, and settings. Download the latest applications and drivers. I separate them here because updating them is usually handled differently: Motherboard Specific Drivers - Auto Update System and Chipset usually Intel Onboard Sound Onboard Video some motherboards Onboard LAN Many motherboard manufactures and computer vendors have an application that will check all the motherboard-related drivers to see if they are current.

Figure A The expanded items in the Device Manager show the devices installed on my computer requiring a manual driver download and install. Housecleaning and backing up your data. Editor's Picks. Linux kernel 5. Windows Do these 11 things immediately. Top 5 things to do about your tech before you die. If you're not using a kanban board, you're not as productive as you could be. Comment and share: 10 things you should do before, during, and after reinstalling Windows.

Show Comments. Hide Comments. My Profile Log out. Join Discussion. The best allocation size based on the size of the hard drive will be chosen.

It's not at all common to set a custom allocation unit size when formatting a hard drive in Windows. Next is the Perform a quick format checkbox. Windows will check this box by default, suggesting that you do a "quick format" but we recommend that you uncheck this box so that a "standard format" is performed.

In a standard format , each individual "part" of the hard drive, called a sector, is checked for errors and overwritten with a zero —a sometimes painfully slow process. This procedure ensures that the hard drive is physically working as expected, that each sector is a reliable place to store data, and that existing data is unrecoverable. In a quick format , this bad sector search and basic data sanitization is skipped entirely and Windows assumes that the hard drive is free of errors.

A quick format is very fast. You, of course, can do whatever you like—either method will get the drive formatted. However, especially for older and brand new drives, we'd prefer to take our time and do the error checking right now instead of letting our important data do the testing for us later on. The data sanitization aspect of a full format is nice, too, if you're planning on selling or disposing of this drive. The final format option is the Enable file and folder compression setting that is unchecked by default, which we recommend sticking with.

The file and folder compression feature allows you to choose files or folders to be compressed and decompressed on the fly, potentially offering considerable savings on hard drive space. The downside here is that performance can be equally affected, making your day-to-day Windows use much slower than it would be without compression enabled. File and folder compression has little use in today's world of very large and very inexpensive hard drives. In all but the rarest occasions, a modern computer with a large hard drive is better off protecting all the processing power it can and skipping on the hard drive space savings.

Review the settings you've made in the last several steps and then click OK. As a reminder, here's what you should see:. Look back at whatever previous steps you need to if you're wondering why these are the best options. Windows is usually pretty good about warning you before you might do something damaging, and a hard drive format is no exception. Click OK to the warning message about formatting the drive. Just as the warning says, all the information on this drive will be erased if you click OK.

You can't cancel the format process halfway through and expect to have half of your data back. As soon as this starts, there's no going back. There's no reason for this to be scary but we do want you to understand the finality of a format. The hard drive format has begun!

If you chose a quick format , your hard drive should only take several seconds to format. If you chose the standard format , which we suggested, the time it takes the drive to format will depend almost completely on the size of the drive.

A small drive will take a small amount of time to format and a very large drive will take a very long time to format. This utility comes with Windows 98, , and XP computers. However, you must format the CD before you can use the Backup utility. You should see the Welcome to the Backup or Restore Wizard dialog box that looks similar to the following:.

At this point, you have a number of options about the data you want to back up. In most cases, you want to back up at least some of the data in your My Documents folder. You can now specify the location to which you will back up the data. You may already have a naming scheme for backups e. A nice touch here is that you can search for a particular file or folder that you want to restore.

At this point, you can choose to restore either to the original location or to a new location. Press Start restore. You can also choose to have restore deal with all further conflicts the same way by checking the Do this for all conflicts box. Vista now includes the ability to restore to a previous version of a file on the local hard drive. Previous versions of local files may be restored from shadow copies that are automatically created every day or from a backup. So, it might be possible to restore a document to its previous state without the need to use backup media.

Right click on the file you want to restore, select Restore previous versions from the menu, and click the Previous Versions tab. If the shadow copy is given as the location, then you can highlight the file version in the list and open it, restore it or save a new copy without backup media. As you can see, the new Previous Versions feature of Vista is useful for restoring individual files when accidental changes have been made that need to be reversed.

Complete PC Backup introduces a new concept to Vista that was previously only available via third-party applications, such as Symantec Ghost. It allows a user to create a complete image of their hard drive for the purpose of restoring all files, settings, configuration and programs, should a hard drive fail completely. You should create an image of your hard drive once you have completed the initial installation of the operating system and installed and configured all of the required programs and settings.

After that, make an image once every six months or immediately after you have made major changes to the system.