Tuesday Tech: Starting Fresh, part two

note: for part one of this post, go here

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I finally did it. I took the plunge and reformatted my computer. I had MEANT to do it two weeks ago, but well, you know… life happens. As I’ve mentioned before, reformatting a computer means a time commitment — if you want to be able to be up and running in the same day, that is!

Feeling confident in my preparations, I opened up the chassis, blew out about five pounds of dust, installed my newly acquired 2G of RAM, plugged keyboard, mouse, and power back in, and started in on the reformatting, which took a lot less time than I thought it would. I managed to get all the appropriate updates done, drivers installed, and my security suite and other essential programs installed in just a couple of hours. The only casualty of the reformatting? Windows 7 doesn’t like one of my printers. Someday I’ll work on that issue.

The real “fun” of reformatting is getting to work on a computer which is – for all intents and purposes — brand new. It is a chance to start fresh. Don’t like your file structuring? When you reformat, create a structure you like, and then transfer your data into that structure, weeding out the extraneous and non-necessary files along the way. You may re-discover a forgotten photo, or find that essay you wrote seven years ago. It takes time and patience, and you certainly don’t need to do it all in one sitting. My data files, as I mentioned in my previous post, reside on my home server, but that didn’t stop me from starting a restructuring process this time around. My programs still have their default go-to data folders, so when I set those, I started the data restructuring. I’ve found some long-forgotten gems, and well as many (many) duplicates. I suspect I will still be sorting through files and “re-filing them” well into the summer (maybe beyond), as I’m managing to get about thirty minutes done a day, but it is well-worth it.

Now, if I could only re-organize my house in the same manner!