Clean OS install tip

One of the things I've started to do with both laptops and desktops is when I need to do a clean install I go buy a new hard drive (pretty cheap these days) and an external USB drive case for the old drive. Install the new drive as primary, do the clean OS install, install all of your software and then connect the old drive (installed in the external enclosure) via USB and copy your data onto your new drive. Once you get everything over you can reformat the external drive and you now have a drive to backup to. Saves lots of headaches.

If things go south on your new install you can always pop the old drive back in.

The good thing about this too is for your laptop you can replace that 5400rpm drive with a 7200 to bump your performance. For my Vista desktop I have 3 300GB drives with my old XP drive ready to be boot drive by swapping SATA cables from the Mobo

I'm about to try a XP Pro install on my G1S-A1 and I did an Ubuntu install on my Dell 710m this way.

 

The amount of times I have done a clean install I would probably have 30 HD's.

 

Same here.

 

Clean install tip #3588

http://www.vlite.net

http://www.nliteos.com/

 

Why not just partition the HD?

 

Yep, at least an OS and a data partition and then you can kill / reinstall your OS without worrying about your data.

Also I suggest that after you have made a clean install of your OS of choice, configured it, and installed all the apps that you need regularly, use Part Image http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page (namely, the bootable ISO of System Rescue CD http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page ) to make an image of your OS partition. Save the image to DVDs or a backup HDD, or just the Data partition, and when you have issues all you need to do is recover that partition from the saved image.

A paid option to Part Image is Norton Ghost.

Similar to the ASUS recovery process -- but like this you get to restore to your optimized settings and applications.

 

I do... LOL!!!