Formatting my laptop

[malikrthr]

Lately I have been debating whether I should format my laptop hard drive or not. I only have 1.35 GB left of memory on my C drive which means I can't really install anything. Just basic surfing the web. Would it make sense to format my laptop hard drive if I have only that little free space. Christmas is coming up, but I really want to avoid looking for a new laptop because alot of money has been put towards my gaming desktop and more money will be put towards college in a couple of months. Is it best to just format the laptop hard drive? If so, would my hard drive space go back to having 250GB of free space.I have a 2009 Dell Inspiron 1545 and Windows Vista Home Premium. I have never really formatted a hard drive before but I think it is the better thing to do if you don't want to spend money on a brand new machine.

I was told that to format the computer in Windows Vista, I have to put the Windows Vista disk in the computer, and then a screen will show asking me if I want to format the hard drive or not. Is that true? About how long does it take for someone who has never performed this.

Another thing, my anti virus is the latest version of Norton 360. I have to pay for that about every year. If I have to pay for it, would that interfere with me formatting the hard drive because all the files get removed? If I format my hard drive, I just want to use my laptop for typing up documents, making power points, putting music and photos, surfing the internet and playing openBVE from my flashdrive. I would leave Trainz for my gaming desktop that should be finished soon.

Please help. I would really like to know if it makes sense to format the hard drive if I only have 1GB of free space left. If it does make sense to format, then how do you do it? Any help is appreciated.

 

[Bill69]

Hi malikrthr,

First, Do Not format your hard drive if you don't have a Windows disk and a Norton 360 disk.

If your HDD is a 250Gb drive remember the operating system and Norton will take up some space so you will not have 250Gb available after formating and loading these. Also it will take quite a bit of time to do all that and get the laptop usable again.

I would suggest you look through your folders to see what can be deleted, delete whatever you don't want then do a disk defrag.

Cheers,
Bill69

 

[malikrthr]

If I do not want to use the Norton 360 that I pay for every year, would it be alright if I don't have the Norton 360 disk. I can probably go for AVG free anti virus.

If my hard drive is 250GB, about how much memory would I have after the operating system install.

I looked through the folders and deleted things I don't need. I backed up things that I would want to use. Would it make sense to back up the E drive or recovery drive to a flash drive.

About how long would all of this take?

 

[Bill69]

If I do not want to use the Norton 360 that I pay for every year, would it be alright if I don't have the Norton 360 disk. I can probably go for AVG free anti virus.

If my hard drive is 250GB, about how much memory would I have after the operating system install.

I looked through the folders and deleted things I don't need. I backed up things that I would want to use. Would it make sense to back up the E drive or recovery drive to a flash drive.

About how long would all of this take?

Well now you are telling us a bit more than you did at first. Better to give your complete computer specs then we can advise better. For instance how many drives and what size. What is your total RAM memory, what graphics card do you have? etc. etc. Shane Turner has a program that will give your computer specs if you don't know how to find out yourself.

Look here My Tutorial index thread

Cheers,
Bill69

 

[malikrthr]

I thank you for your help but I don't think I will need to be formatting now because I deleted trainz 2009 from my computer. There was so much downloaded content, that I freed up about 45GB. Right now, I have 47.9GB of free space. Trainz is still deleting the downloaded content. After that, I am going to delete something else which should bring me up to around 60GB of free space. My laptop will no longer be for Trainz. It will be used for typing up documents, powerpoints, music and pictures, surfing the web and running openBVE since my laptop handles that pretty good via flash drive. Of course, I will be dropping by the forums daily to see what is going on. I am hoping to get another power supply this weekend for my custom gaming desktop though.

 

[drchoi21]

Malikrthr get a good one like my Antec High Current Gamer 750W Gamer Power Supply It's expensive, but it's worth the price

 

[Bill69]

Ok. I think that's a wise decision, laptops are never very good for running Trianz.

Don't forget to defrag your drive after deleting lots of stuff.

Cheers,
Bill69

 

[malikrthr]

Drchoi21: That sounds great. I heard Antec power supplies were really good. My Ultra LSP 700w power supply has 80% efficiency and 135mm fans. I am not sure if it was limited edition power supply but I do have a life time warranty on it so I should be able to get another one from Tigerdirect for free.

Bill69: Would it be safe to use the built in defragmenter that comes with Windows. Usually, my laptop takes about a good 5-8 hours to defrag. In the past, I notice that once the defragment is done, my laptop looses about 30GB. Would there be a way to avoid losing that much space or is it normal?