✅ Watch next ▶ How to “Reset this PC” to Reinstall Windows ▶ kzread.info/dash/bejne/opmt086pZMq3qrQ.html

I’m exhausted. Been there done that. I dread it because it usually takes days to have everything back at your fingertips.

@JV-pu8kx

20 күн бұрын

I'm maintaining an install/setup script for Debian. Anytime I install something I know I will want to keep, I add the process to the script, and clean out the things I don't want to keep.

Being a geek is the high maintenance side of one's personality. Oh, I feel that large share of hardship, troubleshooting. Sometimes I wish I were a layman, but then I see that would be silly with a worse payoff and I change the wish for being able to gloss over details, it's hard to attain such zen state, but it stays as the an ideal. Great software list, even xplorer2... A man of culture! Figure of speech, I know better to not be surprised, ha! The ones I pick differently are FastStone (in place of XnView) for comparing images side by side and gaming graphics such as anti-aliasing, different settings and post-processing. Potplayer because it can do absurd things as supersampling movies using NVIDIA's DSR aaaand I add a dedicated music player, WACUP, from the community project to keep Winamp up-to-date, because, of course, it still whips the llama's ass.

I have 2 to 3 external drives connected at any given time. If I need to reinstall Windows, I disconnect ALL secondary drives, including Drive D, my internal 'project' drive. Once you reinstall Windows, reconnect your drives. I reconnect my internal drive first, because I want it re-registered as Drive D. My external drives are used for specific projects, so the drives MUST be labeled as before, so as not to mess with my workflow. These drives have physical labels, including the assigned drive letter. Just reconnect the drives in the order you originally had them, and they will register accordingly, saving you the aggravation of using Windows Disk Management.

@SpaceCadet4Jesus

20 күн бұрын

In your favor you have a well thought out plan, whereas most computer users have nothing but a mess all over their computer. It's not the physical computer or the operating system that's causing this problem it's the people that are using it they're just disorganized, haphazard and don't care. As an IT troubleshooter, repair, system builder, who sees all types of machines and the users habits over 3 decades, I would guesstimate 98% of the people are disorganized laize faire clutter bugs. I've had people store their documents in the recycle bin, hundreds of files they wanted to keep safe. People who stored their documents in the Windows folder, and those people who stored their files and programs all over the computer, including installing programs directly to the C: root Drive. You really can't make this stuff up. You can't really complain about an operating system when it doesn't control your behaviors, and it's your behaviors and patterns of operation that are causing the real issue why you need to reinstall. Just talking about people in general.

With XP all that changed, a few driver issues at first but by SP2 it was and still is my favourite OS.

This is a very good video. Personally I've done a similar thing on ocassions. Usually taking a backup after every piece of software I reinstall in case I need to go back. Done a lot of tweaks as well. Enjoying your videos, Leo. I'm in Scotlansd.

Yes, it shows what a big project it can be to do that fresh install with all the desired customisations. I use portable programs whenever possible - all stored in a single root folder. This reduces the effort needed, installation wise and also reduces clutter in the registry, etc. However, in 7 years I haven't felt the need to re-install fresh Windows but I do keep a keen eye on startup entries, unwanted processes creeping in, etc.

That was a good video Leo.. Thanks for sharing your experience.

It sounds like a lot of work! Cheers

@1:20 I know of no usable SSD that has lasted longer than the machine it was put in, unless it was put into an older machine. As a system builder and troubleshooter, I replace ssds like pancakes compared to machines. I typically see between 3 to 5 years before the SSD is causing user issues ( sometimes earlier), but causing user issues is not the same as failing, nor is it covered under warranty. So in one way, SSDs have lasted longer than the machine, but it's unusable from a user perspective and needs replacement.

I keep an initial Windows install backup using one of the many OS backup programs. That one I KEEP. Then I keep another backup once I have installed my "basics",. After that I backup the OS on a 3 week schedule, retaining the most recent 5 backups. I do something similar for my data drive.

@SpaceCadet4Jesus

20 күн бұрын

98% of the computer using public doesn't even consider doing something like this. And if they do consider it they quickly abandon it. How many IT professionals are not backing up their computer on a regular basis? Does the word multitude have any meaning? You on the other hand are a much better user than I've seen in a long time, a rare exception. 👍

Thanks for this video -- much appreciated. Every time I think about having to set up a new PC, it gives me a headache and takes me days to finish installing all the software I want. I always max out every new PC I get with 64 gb RAM and it never seems like enough. [Sigh]

Thanks, I'm looking forward to the next one! I'm going to need to do this for my partner's desktop. A year or more back I had to reinstall but thought I'd give a Linux desktop a try but my partner won't want to do that. I actually quite enjoyed finding alternatives to a few programmes but I do miss Scrivener -- for writing. It's only for Mac and Windows.

My system is an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, a recent system with 32GB RAM and 3TB of drives. Last week, Windows 11pro was asking me to reboot to install the updates it had downloaded. I stalled this reboot for as long as Windows would allow me, then it decided to force the reboot while I was actively doing something. Being ever so happy to lose my work-in-progress, I made a ventoy usb drive with a couple of linux ISOs. During this process, I experienced the blue screen of death fun several times. First time seeing the BSOD in over 10 years. I saved important files from my c drive, then nuked it. I will never return to MS as a primary OS again. Reinstalling Windows is like going back to an abusive spouse, expecting better treatment.

@CptBlackEye

28 күн бұрын

PS - Otherwise, you did a really good job with this video. Keep up the good work sharing your experiences.

@doityourself3293

27 күн бұрын

I did that also... Windows forced me to reboot. I turned off update several months ago.

@davidmartin8211

25 күн бұрын

This is their way to force you to buy a new computer with a NPU so you will be forced to run the new recall software.

@SpaceCadet4Jesus

20 күн бұрын

I guess you were the abusive spouse when you just didn't pay attention to the need to do the update, in fact, you refused to do the updates. Windows will tell you when it's going to force an update, but you merely went along like nothing was going to happen to the bitter end. And at the end decided to give up your operating system for something else just because of your bad habits. Don't make me believe you're a real Windows user, instead of a trolling Linux user. It'll be likely you won't do Linux updates either.

@CptBlackEye

20 күн бұрын

@@SpaceCadet4Jesus Wow. A bit unhinged and a whole lot judgmental. WWJD

great info,

Dell had me do a complete reinstall, deleting all of the existing partitions. I made sure I had 3 macrium image backups on 3 external drives first. I restored some of the appdata directories to migrate program settings.

My essential install order on a new build Firefox, Everything ( then : Thunderbird, Sync, SumatraPDF, Sublime text, Putty, notepad++, Keepass, Sysinternals )

I just went from an intel machine to a AM5 and the only things I kept were my drives. It booted right up and only had a small issue with video driver but once that was fixed it's been all good.

With Solaris, DGUX/OSF/1, IRIX, and many other UNIX based OS's it is the norm to: "Nuke it from orbit" on a version upgrade (e.g. Solaris 2.4 to 2.5.1). It gave you an opportunity to upgrade disks or move partitions around. AIX was different. You could upgrade in place the OS from 4.0 to 4.2.x. If you had disk space issues you could add a disk to the LVM and migrate the PPs from one disk to another. all while ON LINE (circa 1998).

Thanks!

@askleonotenboom

27 күн бұрын

Thank you!

Meanwhile me: didn't reinstall since 2015...

I haven’t had to live like that in decades with my Windows. I rarely have to reboot . I couldn’t cite the last blue screen I’ve encountered. I wish we could install Windows and/ or other OS’s in something like ESXi and be able to do snapshots and all things things whine having virtually all direct hardware access (multiple monitors, etc etc) I would love to run my daily driver from a VM and have fully near peer hardware access / use the physical machine natively.

@SpaceCadet4Jesus

20 күн бұрын

You can run Windows on the hardware as a virtual machine, but in your case I don't see any advantages. You can run Windows in a Vbox, although I'm not sure that it will allow multiple monitors.

My oldest OS is a VBox VM with Windows XP Home. I installed it in March 2010 and I never reinstalled it, it now runs for 14 years without any issue. In the begin I used it for work, nowadays I mainly use it a couple of times per week as jukebox. Software rot, I never had that type of problem in this century, not with XP, 7 nor 10. Maybe the difference is that I always run IOBIT Advanced System Care once per week and that corrects any type of rot.

have you tried removing from the Temp folder in often used which slowed down the computer :)

Thanks Leo, I do this on a regular basis for customers, I'm surprised you didn't restore Win11 from an image created from Macruim Reflect, Acronis etc. My workshop laptop which I use for testing and trialing software also converting e-mail for customers amongst other things, I can restore back to where I had it, including all software, settings and tweaks in less than 5 min. I tend also to disconnect other internal drives before loading Windows - (just in case) if I do have to reload Windows from scratch. Did you create an image file after you did all that ? Your content is fantastic !!!

@js33412

28 күн бұрын

That would not work. It would copy the Windows problems along to the (not) new system.

@AndyM...

27 күн бұрын

@@js33412 Not quite, if you create the image straight after a fresh Windows install, configure it to your liking, install and activate your necessary apps, then create an image, when you restore it, it will not copy any problems, it will restore it to that exact point, taking only minutes and save you many hours of work.

@js33412

27 күн бұрын

@@AndyM... Yes, if you had thought to save that virgin backup. Of course I was thinking of my nightly and weekly backups. I should do what you did next time I have to do a full install.

no more windows for me, new things like AI, adds, bloats, games and others i dont want on a PRO OS... never more windows! I switched to Linux from months and im so happy with it!

@haplozetetic9519

23 күн бұрын

Welcome to the Linux world!

Whew!!!! How long has it been since OS designers/marketing told us that their platforms/machines made computing EASY? 1984?

How do you keep up with all these items?

I'm guessing that perhaps your CMOS batter is/was a bit low. I had a similar issue just a month ago on a similarly vintage machine (5 years old) where it warned on a cold boot that the memory size had changed or something like that. Maybe the AMD bios reset the TPM setting due to that?

never had to do that with windows 10 since having in 2017 actually had to just replace hdd mecanical with 1tb ssd and 1 tip just use revo uninstaller to remove software it gets rid of everything of the program avoids software rot removed all registry entires related to software it will also remove files and folders left from the reoved software as well

I have a main ssd and secondary hdd, i recently transferred my temp files path from ssd to hdd. Is it okay? I did that because i dont want temp files reducing my ssds write cycles

Beginning last fall, had to unexpectedly replace my desktop when it threw a wrong error code (failed mainboard) when it was really, the CMOS battery that had died. But didn't realize that until AFTER the fact. Now I run a 7th gen Core i5 processor from 2017, rather than the 4th gen variant of the same (2013) and in February, bought a replacement laptop for a very old Inspiron from 2006 as pricing out replacement 40GB HDD for SSD would have cost me about as much as purchasing a refurbished laptop as the Inspiron ran IDE instead of SATA, if I could even find new IDE drives (doubt it). The laptop is an 8th gen i5, built in 2019 (early I believe). Both are Dell machines, both bought refurbished, both business class machines at that, running Windows 11, one Pro, the other Home. Both with i5 processors. Anyway, they are both OEM OS's and I still need to create a recovery disk, just not sure if I need 2 or 1 since they run different variants of 11. I have performed backups of both, each on their own drive (spare mechanical 500GB drives I have laying around). The next thing are all the externals on my desktop that are filled with data folders that should be backed up. But before I do that, need to go through documents and what not and consolidate/clean up of unfinished work that I no longer am working on and delete those, then get them all to ONE location, instead of scattered about on several drives. I still have a few pieces of software I need to reinstall, but have most of what I need for now for both machines. Mind you, the laptop does not need as much software as my desktop as it's not my main machine, but is for viewing YT videos at the kitchen table, and other occasional work, and for travel and capturing analog audio from the stereo. Just need a digital interface for that to happen. But all computers will need the occasional cleanup/maintenance and clean out of dust from time to time to keep them running their best. The biggest thing now is I frequently am running 13GB of my 16GB of memory on the desktop, and am thinking of bumping that to 32GB. Eventually, a new build will be in the works that will be something other than a SFF Optiplex, running an i7 processor of at least the 12th gen. First need to update my spreadsheet for that project and then begin to save the money.

By doing this kind of installation instead of the USB stick type, will it clear up any hidden malware that might have been in the previous Windows?.

Time to have two Linux based hard drives for the machine. Keep personal data on micro ssd cards or external hard drives. And yes one hard drive for the current windows nagging os. I am using a 2012 ish T510 Thinkpad with a ultra drive. So it is very easy to use the second hard drive for primary boot drive which is removable in seconds.

I did a re install of my desktop PC, it took about two days to get everything back.

Thanks Leo! Could you elaborate on leaving Adobe? Does FoxIT the same?

@askleonotenboom

28 күн бұрын

I was paying monthly for the Adobe Suite, and stopped. Didn't want their auto-start software or other fragments, so decided to see if I could live without. FoxIt reader is equivalent to Adobe Reader.

Anyone else hear an occasional bell type tone in the audio on the video, like an alert would send out?

@terryhoy9210

28 күн бұрын

Yes I thought my headphone battery was running low, but it wasn’t.

I got the message on my windows pc that it looks like Windows didn't load correctly. Kindly tell me that data from which drive will be removed from laptop after reinstalling windows?

Just curious, why use any PDF reader when the browser can display PDF files? My media player of choice is MPC-BE. I think the video is clearer than VLC and it's lightweight. I like Q-Dir for file operations. I have 4 panes to work with.

@askleonotenboom

17 күн бұрын

I prefer the additional control an external PDF reader gives me. Browser-based PDF readers always have limitations and just feel clunky to me.

Replace CMOS battery and turn off fast boot are simple steps to add.

I am certainly not in your situation, but I got rid of all the cloud apps except Proton. Including C and backup external, I run 5 drives and reroute all the MS libraries to a separate work drive. I store nothing of value on the C drive, that way if it croaks I can reinstall and have everything I would have lsot

Great video, and Leo do you have Dutch descent? Notenboom = a al Dutch name. (Netherlands) kind regards. Andre (from the Netherlands)

@askleonotenboom

26 күн бұрын

Parents were born in The Netherlands. :-)

@Andre-xu3pq

26 күн бұрын

@@askleonotenboom I thought so, because Notenboom is a really known name and Dutch name If you speak dutch?, leuke videos ik bekijk ze vaak met plezier 😉

@davidmartin8211

25 күн бұрын

The name means nut tree?? Like nussbaum.

@Andre-xu3pq

25 күн бұрын

@@davidmartin8211 Good evening, That is correct indeed, Noten = Nuts and boom = Tree. In the Netherlands during the time of Napoleon's occupation, the Dutch were required to adopt a "surname" to be registered, as many did not have one and often used "son of" as their name. Many people chose a name based on their profession or where they lived, so your surname could indicate that your ancestors worked in that field. However, some people chose a name "at random" because they thought that if Napoleon were ever defeated, this would be revoked. But this was not the case, as Prince William of Orange (the first king) found it useful for registering people and families for purposes such as taxation. Regards, Andre

If your computer is slowing down, it is likely due to you accepting offers when prompted to do so, and installing things that catch your eye. There are ways to do the above, without slowing down your computer (at least, not slowing it down for long). If you are someone that likes to explore and install numerous applications, and numerous browser add-ons, etc, then do so in a virtual machine. Several very good ones are free, and open source. For day-to-day, routine tasks, I have been using a first generation i7-950 since its debut, approximately 15 years ago. I have never had issues, because I do not take risks. If I want to explore, or see how an application works, or test anything, I run a virtual machine. Doing so sandboxes that activity within the VM. And restoring the VM to the state it was in, prior to monkeying around, takes 1 second. On my i9 computer, I also use virtual machines, because I have more RAM. I can run multiple VMs, and they do not see each other, and they keep my activities segmented / compartmentalized. It is virtually identical to running multiple computers, each one for a specific purpose, and only that specific purpose. And the beauty of doing this with VMs is that you can undo your mistakes or reckless actions in an instant, with a VM. VMs allow you to take snapshots of the VMs state. You can very quickly return to one of those states. Also, if you want to tinker with Linux or any other OS, VMs are your ticket for doing so. You can run just about any OS under the sun. You have something that worked with Windows XP, then run Windows XP as a VM. No need to worry about not getting updates for XP, as when you are done having fun with your XP VM, just clobber it and it will return to the state it was in before you used it. Get a virus, or worse on a VM, just restore the last snapshot, and you are good to go. It takes a second to restore the last snapshot. You can do your banking in one VM, and do your facebook in a different VM, etc. That will help you avoid being tracked, and keep unrelated activities from crossing paths. You can use your Chrome browser in one VM, and Firefox in a different VM, etc. And if you have a visitor, you can give them a VM to do their business. When they are done, you restore it to its last snapshot, or you can leave it as is. Whatever fits your needs. There are many hypervisors (the foundation for running VMs) available. The most user friendly (as far as I know) is Oracle's Virtual Box. It is not as feature rich as the other offerings. But the other offerings might make your head spin, with their endless configuration settings. If you have the head for it, try one of the others. But I believe that Virtual Box will be more than enough for most folks. If you get a new computer, I recommend that you install VM software, and almost nothing else -- and do all of your activities in one or more VMs. That will keep your actual Windows installation running at its full potential and will keep it clean. You should never see a slowdown (short of Microsoft releasing a problematic Windows Update). Keep in mind that each VM that you run will need enough RAM allocated to it (that is a value that you set for each VM). The RAM for each VM will, of course, be taken from your actual physical RAM. So depending on how many VMs you will run, simultaneously, and how much RAM you will allocate to each VM, is something you have to consider in how much physical RAM your physical host machine has. 32GB of RAM should be enough for most folks, to be shared by your VMs (keeping in mind that your actual Windows box will need (let's say) at least 8GB devoted to itself). The above will keep your physical Windows machine perpetually clean, and running at full speed for all time.

Can you cover doing this to a prebuilt machine? I'm like you and from the old school where it was simple to wipe a hard drive and use windows installation media (I'm old enough to remember when it was multiple floppy discs and then multiple 3.5" discs and then CD-Rom). But I have a prebuilt (Alienware) now and there was a BSOD crash and there's some data on that drive that is still corrupted bc I've reset and reinstalled everything from scratch 3x on this computer and there's still a flipped bit somewhere which absolutely prevents MSFS2020 from using Nvidia DLSS. I want to nuke this thing from orbit, old school, wipe that drive until it's dryer than the Sahara, and then reinstall a fresh copy of windows, but I don't have that option, only to "build" recovery media and I don't want that. It's like trying to get away from a virus, and modern machines don't come with Windows installation. It's awful and I'll never buy a prebuilt again.

I like your glasses.

I like to reformat my drive once a month just for fun with windows 10 LTSC... just keep all your data on a second hard drive...

The bullshit a Windows user will go through just for routine maintenance... I had enough of that garbage by 2004 and couldn't be happier to be cleansed of all things Windows for about two decades now.

@SpaceCadet4Jesus

20 күн бұрын

What routine maintenance? Suck the dust, spiders from the computer, run ccleaner once a week and check your virus/malware scanner is up to date? I run a tight ship, don't scatter my folders and files all over the PC, don't install bull**** programs and check for updates once a month. Basically, effortless.

@Milesco

20 күн бұрын

​@@SpaceCadet4Jesus I hope you didn't dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back!

@SpaceCadet4Jesus

20 күн бұрын

@@Milesco I see no patting going on, just simple and effective habits anyone can do. Sorry you took it so negatively.

The solution to the Dropbox problem is to change the name of your Dropbox folder. Start Dropbox and then use the option to move the default, empty Dropbox folder to the drive where your renamed Dropbox folder resides. Dropbox will create a new Dropbox folder and start downloading. Quit (or kill) Dropbox. Delete the new Dropbox folder. Rename your old Dropbox folder back to Dropbox. Restart Dropbox. It will sync and all should be well.

Cloud is great but not for terrabytes of data, getting your data out of the cloud can take an extremely long time.

@askleonotenboom

28 күн бұрын

Depends on the speed of your internet connection, but yes.

@Bigtbone205

27 күн бұрын

@askleonotenboom I have very fast internet, but onedrive won't let me use anywhere near that bandwidth. The cloud providers throttle the download speed

@flipflopski2951

26 күн бұрын

Cloud is great if you just keep in mind that Cloud is Orwell speak for somebody else's computer...

Could you please reply or post a comment as to how exactly you accomplished the first, original "RESET" of Windows (keeping your settings and personal files). Some of us are about 1000 years old and not techies in the least - and can get all wrapped up and confused regarding all the technical steps and nohow needed to accomplish very specific options. I WANT TO KNOW THE BASICS OF THE EASIEST, FASTEST WAY TO HAVE A WORKING, FASTER, PROBLEM FREE WINDOWS 10!!!!!!!!!!!! 😊 (That would be better than throwing my desktop out the window!!!) Thank you for reading this. Please reply if possible - in baby talk!!!

@askleonotenboom

27 күн бұрын

The article linked in the description includes links to articles that show you how. (Video too.)

While windows has the Windows registry, it will always cause issues. If only everything was contained in its own folder instead, you might not have all the issues one has with Windows.

No windows for me ssd wiped Runing Linux OS no blue screen

one of the things I miss about older versions of windows is the massive range of desktop backgrounds and goofy screen savers and mouse pointer customization and icon customization. It feels like windows has become much more bland recently.

@SpaceCadet4Jesus

20 күн бұрын

There's still a mountain of desktop backgrounds, that even change daily, in fact any folder full of pictures will do. Mouse pointer customizations are still available. I've got a pointer with a rocket ship and when you click on something the Flames come out, or it changes color and position. One of my favorite Mouse pointers is a black hollow triangle with an electrical blue aura and lightning that descends along the sides starting from the tip continually. If you have saved your customizations from Windows XP days, you can still use them. I'm using Windows 11 Pro without using the file Explorer and my start menu looks very similar to single pane Windows XP with heavy categorization and customization, including the icons. . The same customization is saved over each new operating system. You just need to get busy looking.

Leo, the litany of problems you just described would take a month to resolve by a user who, unlike you, is _not_ a fulltime, 40-hour-a-week techie. If Windows were a vehicle one used to get to & from work every day, it would be classified as a "Pushmobile".

Cant say i have had a bluescreen since about 1999 lol you must be doing stuff wrong somewhere. like using windows 11? :)

Some Magic for Video Editing -- Make sure you have Windows Ram Compression turned OFF..! A must to do...!! Make sure you have MB 10bit TAG Support turned on. Again a must to do. This increased my Corel Editor by 3X times faster in render speed. With AMD CPU. For 32GB of RAM or MORE...!!!!!!! (you really need 64GB because Window 10/11 can take as much as 40GB just for its system) But most people can get by with 32GB. How to turn off RAM/Memory compression USE: Right Click Mouse on Windows Icon /Click on Windows PowerShell (Admin) type or copy " Disable-MMAgent -mc " (return) don't copy the quotes marks.! NOTE: this works with AMD or Nivida Cards...! Mother Board - "10bit Tag Support" will increase your GPU speed by 1-3 % if turned on. Auto Mode = OFF; This will not work with old M.2 drives. The hardware needs to be Gen4 or 5 / Amazing Graphics with this on, if your running a 10bit monitor in 10 bit mode Vcard. This is a must do for Nivida GEN4 cards. (Note: You can not use LINUX OS with this on some apps.) Note: It's ok to turn on 10bit TAG SUPPORT with SATA drives in the MB.! Bios path: you can fined this in MB: / advanced / amdcbs / nbio / 10bit on the AMD ASUS bios. Virtualization: turn it OFF in the MB BIOS again this will speed up your FPS. Its turned on by DEFAULT. you will get ~40 FPS more if turned off. C State: Global C-State in MB can be turned off and it will increase your FPS another 2 to 3 FPS on top of what the other stuff gives you. Enjoy all.!!

"Whew!", indeed! 🙄

Microsoft wants you to buy a new machine because they are about to couple their Operating System to the hardware and start charging a subscription fee. And for a bonus a free Trojan Horse called Recall will be included in the package!..

Windows 11 still uses drive letters? 😳

@askleonotenboom

24 күн бұрын

You betcha. To not do so would break thousands of existing applications.

Winbloat

"These days, Windows has improved to the point where its stability will typically outlast the life of the machine you're using it on" ... and that new feature will accelerate when they come out with their next OS version. You'll simply have to throw the hardware away.

@askleonotenboom

28 күн бұрын

Or keep running what you have.

linux doesnt do that....

you do not need to turn on hyper-v in windows you just need to make sure it is enabled in the bios .. then you can use almost all virtual machines out there like virtual box vmware etc... if you are using the windows virtualmachine then i really doubt your technical skills !!!!

your pc is bleeping all the time in this video so yeah your not that good with pc's and why for the love of god are you using chrome remote crap ??? use nomachine which is available for every operating system and is also free with loads of options so yeah i would never ask leo for any pc related things as leo does not know what leo is doing ... dude really are you serious with this ??? you would be fired in a day if you worked where i work

Never reformat a drive. They're dirt cheap. Replace it if faulty. You'll likely double your storage for nothing, compared to what you have. 37 years in enterprise IT here.