Reformat Hard Drive

[Guest_imported]

How often should a hard drive be reformatted? Computer is 6 years old, has NEVER been refomatted and hard drive has been working very slowly. After deleting all temps, etc.would the next step be a complete reformat of this drive in order to start fresh?

 

[edfair]

Reformatiing is overblown for your problems. You might end up doing one, but in the meantime try defragging. And try deleting the temp directory and recreating it.
Formatting does an absolute defrag and locks out questionable clusters. It also forces reload of everything. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[deh]

I will have to agree that after 6 years it is probably time to "start fresh". After 6 years one usually finds it time to purchase a new machine. New software and technologies are more resource intensive, therefore will tend to bog down an older system. I don't know your situation but this could be the case or you could have just outgrown your system. That machine that seemed so fast a year ago doesn't seem as fast because now all the sudden you are more things at once.
I know some techs that reformat every spring (they install and uninstall alot of software). I did a survey with techs on this exact question before and the general consensus on people operating primarily in a Windows environment (both hardware and software people alike) was 1 - 2 years.