I usually reformat once every year or two (mostly to fix the problems I get from trying to find an ATI driver that actually works properly with my AIW 9600xt, especially getting the dumb TV tuner to work right).
Question for you guys who almost never reformat (just do "preventative maintenance"), what are some specific things you do that sidestep a lot of the problems the average dumb user has that 'requires' a format? I'm no n00b, but I'm not an IT Pro either and want to get better. I know a lot of the ultra-basics (regular defrags, spybot, adaware, good firewall, etc), but want to learn some of the more advanced stuff.
Some of you mentioned third party apps like registry cleaners...are there any that you specifically recommend? I'm on a college budget (money=0), so if there are any good free ones I especially want to hear about them.
I can't remember who, but someone on this thread recommended having separate Ghost images for the OS+Drivers and all the Apps/Program files (with data on a third partition). Any recommendations for how big I need to make each of those partitions? (again, college budget, so I don't have huge hard drives, just a 160 gig and a 120 gig). If I were to make those two partitions on the primary hard drive (with the leftover space on it being for other data), is there any way to make the computer see the third partition (data) and the second hard drive as one big drive to make managing that space easier (so "My Computer" would see three drives rather than four)?
Thanks!