Formatting Question

[Jarester]

Ok so I'm thinking of formatting my comp it's acting slow and I dont know whether its the hardware or just cause i prob got a ton of sht from past games, etc..

I dont have any viruses and I checked Crystal Disk and it said my 7200 rpm hddrive is in 'Good' condition

I am gonna get a USB stick about 16gb prob for installation file

but the main problem I think i'll have when formatting is after I format, what do I do then? do I just install the windows, is their anything else to install? do I need to install drives? I know how to install gpu drive of course but what else will I have to do?

also is this process kinda easy? or difficult?

 

[TheLostSwede]

First of all you need to work out if you're going to do an MBR or GPT installation, as depending on that, you have to create the bootable USB drive differently. This is assuming Windows 10.

Once you've figure that out and created the installation drive, simply reboot the system, boot from USB and follow the steps, no need to format. When you get to the point of selecting the installation drive, remove all partitions and then select the empty drive as the target for the Windows installation and the rest is fairly automatic.

As to what drivers you need to install, well, that depends on what is supported natively by Windows. It might be a good idea to at least have the Ethernet driver and graphics drivers set aside, so you can install those and then download the chipset, audio and whatever other drivers you need once your new Windows install is up and running.

Apart form the creation of a bootable GPT USB drive, it's all pretty easy.

 

[kastriot]

Don't forget to download and put all drivers for your mobo+gpu on usb stick depending on OS version.

 

[eidairaman1]

Ok so I'm thinking of formatting my comp it's acting slow and I dont know whether its the hardware or just cause i prob got a ton of sht from past games, etc..

I dont have any viruses and I checked Crystal Disk and it said my 7200 rpm hddrive is in 'Good' condition

I am gonna get a USB stick about 16gb prob for installation file

but the main problem I think i'll have when formatting is after I format, what do I do then? do I just install the windows, is their anything else to install? do I need to install drives? I know how to install gpu drive of course but what else will I have to do?

also is this process kinda easy? or difficult?

Have you done a disk cleanup and disk defragmentation?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Have you done a disk cleanup and disk defragmentation?

^This. With standard mechanical HDD's, fragmentation has always been a major problem. Defragmenting a HDD often does wonders for improving performance.

 

[eidairaman1]

^This. With standard mechanical HDD's, fragmentation has always been a major problem. Defragmenting a HDD often does wonders for improving performance.

Especially using command prompt with parameters.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Especially using command prompt with parameters.

My fav defrag is part of Puran's Utility Suite;

Puran Utilities - Optimize your PC for best performance

One of the best I've ever used. Best of all it's free for personal use.

 

[Jarester]

imma try to defrag then atm havent done that in a bit

and so now I need 2 usb sticks? one for key and one for bonus drivers? cause windows 10 installation said I need a usb with 0 stuff on it

also what are the most important drivers I need before I can get them from the net, etc (to put on the 2nd usb). (mobo ethernet ? that it?)

also my windows key is oem to my mobo if that matters

also how do i boot from usb?

 

[lexluthermiester]

cause windows 10 installation said I need a usb with 0 stuff on it

Create the Windows10 USB drive and after that is done create a folder on the drive named " Drivers ", then copy your hardware drivers into it. If it's a 16GB drive it'll have more than enough room for them.

also how do i boot from usb?

Go into your BIOS(or UEFI), find the " Boot " menu and set it up to boot to USB first. Alternatively you can generally press the "F12 " key when the boot screen is showing to bring up the boot selection menu and you can directly select the USB drive. Depending on your system the key to access that menu might be something other than the F12 key, like maybe F10 or F11.

 

[moproblems99]

and so now I need 2 usb sticks? one for key and one for bonus drivers? cause windows 10 installation said I need a usb with 0 stuff on it

I would guess that Windows will come bundled with a suitable driver for your NIC. But it's a gamble and might be a PITA for you if it doesn't. Windows 10 is practically plug and play now. Just don't let it update lol (partially kidding)

 

[John Naylor]

This is what I used to give folks when we did a build for them for such an occurrence ... should update it. Before starting, I take the drive out and format it on another PC using a HD Docking station. Will usually partition the drive for best performance and easy maintenance.

A. Drives are twice as fast on the outer edge than inner... so good planning would dictate perhaps puting OS, temp and page files or games at the outer edge, and archival data at the inner.

B. If ya find yaself in this position again, with just OS on C, you have a much smaller job ahead of you. Say...

C:\ 128 GB OS on C or OS and programs on 250 GB C:|
D:\ 64 GB Temp and page files
E:\ 1 TB Games
F:\ whats left GB My stuff

Can restore OS from an image file or just reinstall. Everything else will be fine... Just reisntall programs over themselves to set up registry. We set up most PCs with an SSD and SSHD now. The SSD has an OS partiton cloned from the SSD... if SSD craps out or gets infected fudged ... can get at all ya files by booting to SSHD via BIOS and can image it back easily.

Of course, if happy witha single drive, if that works for you by all means.

ell anyway

1. Update BIOS if warranted or desired

2. Prepare for Windows installation with USB tool ... we use Rufus

Windows USB/DVD Download Tool - Microsoft Store

www.microsoft.com

3. Connect boot drive data cable to lowest numbered SATA port .... but don't connect:
-Ethernet cable
-SATA Data Cable for any other drives

4. Format C:\ and Install Windows to boot drive

5. Turn off Windows ability to install Hardware drivers (Win 10 has since limited this functionality but still possible with a lil more work) ... will have to get ya a new link

Ten Forums - Windows 10 Help and Support Forum

Windows 10 troubleshooting help and support forum, plus thousands of tutorials to help you fix, customize and get the most from Microsoft Windows 10.

www.tenforums.com

Drivers - Turn Off Automatic Driver Installation - Windows 7 Help Forums

Excellent, Captain Jack. Very well done.

www.sevenforums.com

6. Install all hardware drivers from original media in boxes See Item 8 below

7. Connect ethernet cable and run Windows Update till it stops doing anything

8. Install latest drivers for ALL hardware from manufacturers web sites. The reason we didn't do this in step 5 is 3 fold:
-Sometimes MoBo CD comes with licensed utilities with product key embedded and these are not on web site versions
-Its advisable to establish a working out of box conditions
-Sometimes newer drivers require latest Windows Updates

If you have a 2nd drive .... do 9 - 11

9. Shut down and connect HD data cable to 2nd lowest numbered SATA port.

10. Boot to BIOS and make sure that OS drive is the 1st boot device, if not fix it

11. Boot to Windows ... next 3 steps optional

12. Install RoG Real Bench. run each of the 4 benchmarks twice, 2nd score will usually be significantly better. If anal like me, do 4 times, record the individual scores and average the 2nd thru 4th scores

13. If also concerned about GFX, can run a cupla Unigine GFX bechies

UNIGINE Benchmarks

Performance benchmarks by Unigine

unigine.com

14. If ya have the utility, make a system image that you can restore if anything goes south from here on in.

15. Install all software from original media (again this is only for where have embedded license codes match media). Of course, not needed for free stuff and if ya have electronic license / download keys can skip this.

15. Use the "check for updates" feature and bring all software up to date

 

[lexluthermiester]

A. Drives are twice as fast on the outer edge than inner... so good planning would dictate perhaps puting OS, temp and page files or games at the outer edge, and archival data at the inner.

For mechanical drive, I create 12GB partition at the beginning of the drive, and the OS partition behind it. The OS is installed to the the second partition and the swap/page file is moved to the 12GB partition and set to a fixed size. The "temp" folders are set to the same drive. This keeps the fragmentation to a minimum and keep the page file in the fastest part of the drive.

 

[Jetster]

Partition for a swap file, or small partition for the OS is useless. There is no advantage with a platter drive. Separate partitions for data if you don't have a separate drive? Sure
You're just complicating a simple process that Windows does on it own. Drives are not twice a fast on the outer edge. Slightly faster yes but its not worth the trouble. Sorry I had too

And second this guy is obviously new to a clean install. You will just confuse him. You just put the install media in and boot, disconnect all drives but the OS drive and follow the prompts

After the install download the NIC driver. Connect to the internet and update all other motherboard drivers

 

[juiseman]

If you have the funds....

Buy an SSD; unplug old drive. install Windows,
plug old drive in, copy important data.

Format old drive keep less used games on old HD
and most used games on the new SSD.
Done.

100% user experience improvement.

 

[John Naylor]

For mechanical drive, I create 12GB partition at the beginning of the drive, and the OS partition behind it. The OS is installed to the the second partition and the swap/page file is moved to the 12GB partition and set to a fixed size. The "temp" folders are set to the same drive. This keeps the fragmentation to a minimum and keep the page file in the fastest part of the drive.

That works

Partition for a swap file, or small partition for the OS is useless. There is no advantage with a platter drive. Separate partitions for data if you don't have a separate drive? Sure
You're just complicating a simple process that Windows does on it own. Drives are not twice a fast on the outer edge. Slightly faster yes but its not worth the trouble. Sorry I had too

And second this guy is obviously new to a clean install. You will just confuse him. You just put the install media in and boot, disconnect all drives but the OS drive and follow the prompts

After the install download the NIC driver. Connect to the internet and update all other motherboard drivers

Back in the 90s, AutoCAD was very write intensive and it was well worthwhile buying a 1 GB SCSI drive for $1k to take advantage of the extra speed. There were numerous advisories provided on how to address this. These 2 were on the list. No need to apologize ... I like to say "no one is ever wrong, as in this instance, you have just been misinformed". I'll try and correct that.

1. As to the separate partition, have you heard about fragmentation and it's impact on performance ? When you drive fills up, the amount of continuous empty space shrinks. So your page and temp files get fragmented. Running a defrag, you can see by the color coding the file types and fragmented page files are common. By having them on a separate small partition, this does not happen. In addition, as the page file disappears every time the system is rebooted, and recreated on next boot it tends to get oushed further and further to the much slower inside edge of the drive. Running defragmentation will also do this in trying to keep it in as few segments as possible.

2. If ya don't believe the published test redults, how about 4th grade math. The drive spins at a constant speed. Now when we have a round platter, the amount of data passing the head during each rotation = Diameter x Pi. For your claim to be true .... that the speed doesn't vary .... defies the law of mathematics. Testing shows it is about twice as fast at the outer edges as the inner. Let's "do the math" to see how close that is. For the sake of argument, Let's assume the outermost track on a 3.5" drive is @ a radius of 0.625" (Diameter = 1.25) and the outer edge is at a radius of 1.50 (Diameter = 3.00). The "math" says, the drive is 2.4 times faster at the outside radius than it is on the inside radius. Again, real testing usually shoes about 2.0

Let's compare that with an actual test ... and there it is: 204.0 at he outer edge and 103.2 at he inner. So I guess I am wrong, wasn't 2.00 was actually 1.98 times as fast. I'll take that any day. For me, it's worth the 4 seconds of "trouble".

Hard Drive Optimization Tips and Tricks

Optimize your Hard Drive or SSD with these tips and apps!

www.tomsguide.com

One of the most useful tweaks for traditional hard drive is to partition it into multiple volumes. Partitioning has many benefits, such as keeping your OS files separate from your other data (allowing for cleaner and safer installs with less risk to your other stored files), keeping your page file separate from your other files, increased reliability (file system corruption errors that might knock out one partition may not affect other partitions), the ability to set up multi-boot systems

10 Useful Hard Drive and SSD Optimization Tips - TechPP

If you want to keep your HDD or SSD alive for as much as possible, then you might be interested in some hard drive optimization tricks.

techpp.com

3. There is yet other advantage of a separate Page / Temp file partion. Modern windows file systems like NTFS provide essential data protection but there is a bit of a cost involved in that protection in the way of performance. The overhead associated with the protection scheme has a small but still significant performance cost. If one wants to get that extra bit of performance back, they can format this partition as FAT32. Without NTFS's file protections to worry about, you can regain that performance boost. Worried about file protection ? Why ? These files all disappear after reboot anyway. We've been doing this for over 20 years (since NT4) w/ nary an issue. Not that the performance issue depends on many factors. If the partition is large, the NTFS erases, the advantage nd not all file types benefit as much as page and temp files.

 

[Jetster]

Well you managed to find a drive that is showing twice as fast speed on the otter edge. Good job. All of this was relevant in the 90s, today not so much. W10 has a scheduled fragmentation that does a pretty good job. My point was the benefits gained by all this work are very little for the Normal user. This guy is asking basic question, I don't think he want to make a costom page file which will be loaded into virtual memory anyway and not be slowed by the write speed until its needed. And if you're that concerned about ns get a SSD. Maybe Im just being lazy. But good job explaining all that though

 

[lexluthermiester]

All of this was relevant in the 90s, today not so much.

Incorrect. Unless the laws of physics have changed in the last few decades, the same principle applies now like it did then, no exceptions.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

Well you managed to find a drive that is showing twice as fast speed on the otter edge. Good job. All of this was relevant in the 90s, today not so much. W10 has a scheduled fragmentation that does a pretty good job. My point was the benefits gained by all this work are very little for the Normal user. This guy is asking basic question, I don't think he want to make a costom page file which will be loaded into virtual memory anyway and not be slowed by the write speed until its needed. And if you're that concerned about ns get a SSD. Maybe Im just being lazy. But good job explaining all that though

Go run HDTune on ANY modern HDD and they stil exhibit this exact same behaviour

 

[John Naylor]

Well you managed to find a drive that is showing twice as fast speed on the otter edge. Good job. All of this was relevant in the 90s, today not so much. W10 has a scheduled fragmentation that does a pretty good job. My point was the benefits gained by all this work are very little for the Normal user. This guy is asking basic question, I don't think he want to make a costom page file which will be loaded into virtual memory anyway and not be slowed by the write speed until its needed. And if you're that concerned about ns get a SSD. Maybe Im just being lazy. But good job explaining all that though

I can show you 100 more if ya like... Do the math. As long as the drive platter remains circular, nothing else is physically or mathematically possible.

You point is invalid. If by "normal user", you mean the user who not is impacted by speed, yes. This same user will also see no real benefit from using an SSD because no storage device eliminates the PCs major bottleneck ... and that bottleneck is the user who can not make mouse movements or KB strokes as fast as the PC executes them. Aunt Tilie won't "shop faster" with an SSD, Grandma won't be viewing pictures of the grandkids faster with an SSD, Mom won't read her recipes any faster, GRRM willnot complete the last two GoT books any faster with an SSD.

It simply comes down to this. Either you do or you don't have a need or desire for faster storage subsystems. We have done blind tests where we disable the user's SSD and have them instead boot off the a mirrored SSHD or HD ... 5 users, 2 laptops and 2 desktops, 6 weeks duration .... no one noticed other than on one day's boot to the HD 1 user thought "It seemed to have a slow boot today, maybe was a Windows Update". We haven't installed a HD in 8 years... we started with SSHDs soon after they became available ... no failures yet. The Seagate SSHD has a failure rate of 0.43%, the WD Black 0.44%, the both have 5 year warrantees, the WD costs about 25% and THG testing showed the SSHD to be 53% faster in Gaming and gaming and AutoCAD resuts tend to mirror each other. So on paper it made sense for both day and evening usage... but again, no one noticed.

This is because of the way the human - machine interface works. When a user opens AutoCAD, they are not sitting there staring at the screen ... they are looking at the paper drawing and reviewing the comments / markups that the client has made ... by the time they are finished, the program has been sitting there waiting for input. A 12 second load or a 16 second load makes no difference when it takes 60 seconds before ya look at the screen. When booting the machine at the office in the morning, nobody is sitting there waiting for it to boot, they are taking off their jacket, grabbing a cuppa Java, chatting with cubicle neighbor about last night's GoT episode, the basketball playoff game or what kardashian exposed her lady bits the day before.

So yes, most user's won't notice. But if you are going to argue you "need" a SSD, it's still very hard to justify on a ROI basis. As a youth, I remember adding a 4 barrel carburator to my Tempest .... and as an adult, the Porsche 930 was / is still a thrill to drive. But neither got / gets me to a job site any faster. But if you can justify spending $150 for an SSD to get your system to boot 0.9 seconds faster than SSHD (16.5 verses 15.6 in our testing), how can ya not justify spending 4 seconds to create an extra partition for a 2 fold increase in speed for the device that, after the intial boot, in most instances, gets the most activity ?

 

[Mac2580]

I run Optane in my main build and Kingston 240 GB sata SSD is my lan build. The optane boots extremely fast and the SSD is decent too. Previously i used a Seagate Firecuda 2TB SSHD as my boot drive which is now my game drive. Although alot of people typically dislike these hybrid drives. I have to say that its my favourite drive. In hindsight it used to boot Windows decently fast and game load times are great compared to normal HDDs.