But... of you tell anyone in particular, it could cause concern of being anal retentive or (gasp!) obsessive about one's hard drive.
installing software, especially REinstalling, is about as fun as watching paint dry/grass grow. :-/ i avoid it at all costs.
1 gallon of unleaded gas and a box of matches .... normally speeds up ...slow systems . When done ..reformat drive. ps: must use unleaded gas or reformat won't work.
You can reformat and re-install as much as you link. No harm done to anything in your system (HD, processor or memory) On a practical note. Consider using ghost or some other disk imaging software. Install a clean OS once and make the ghost. Then any re-installs will be done in minutes from the ghost image.
This does not "wipe" the hard disk clean. It simply takes the markers away. The stuff is still there. Michael B.
This is just a suggestion but may help what you are experiencing every couple of months...The next time you re-format your HD, try partitioning the into multiple slices. Assuming you have a 40gb HD, create 2 - 4GB, 2 - 2GB, 2 - 8Gb, and the rest however you decide. On the first 4GB partition, install your OS and relevent drivers. once done, move your paging file to one of the 2GB partitions (your performance should increase...better if you used a second drive to put your paging file on...and better still if you use SCSI drives...and better still if you use RAID). next update your browser (assuming you use MS explorer) and move the temporary internet files to the second 2GB partition. Install a copy of the OS on the second 4GB partition using the same first 2GB partition as the paging file also. install your apps on one of the 8GB partitions and data files on the second 8GB partition. install your trading related software on your remaining partition(s). Again, more drives = better performance Internet files are notorious for defragmenting disks as well as installing and un-installing software. Also, you can create a download file (put on the same directory as the temp internet files) and download all software to this directory. fragmentation will drop dramatically and performance should stay steady for you. I have been running like this for ages and never seem to run into problem like others experience...then again I have multiple pcs -- each doing something specific unlike others who may use their PC for everything including trading... Hope this helps.
I need to add a HD to put some stock data on for backtesting purposes. Apparently it is going to take up a lot of space, how much I don't know though. Does anyone have an opinion on whether I should just buy another 20 gig drive for the data or should I replace my existing 20 gig drive with a 40 or 60 gig drive and keep everything on it? If I buy another drive should I put the backtesting program on that drive as well along with the data or does it even matter? Sorry I've never had two drives before.