Other Now its built

So my PC is finally up and running all drivers ect installed, should i set a restore point or somthing simalar i case of future misshaps??

 

I always do

 

Having a clean installation backup is never going to hurt, I would say go for it.

 

I have an older small hard drive (250gb) and I first installed windows and a few other things onto that. I then plugged in my f3 1tb and converted it into a raid 1 array. I then broke the array leaving me with two single identical installs. I'm now running off the f3 (after extending the windows partition) but if anything goes wrong I can format it and use the spare drive and remake the array (then destroy it) in a couple of hours. I also copy any important files to an external drive.

If you've got space for a back up then its a good idea it's not going to cost anything, except maybe some time, and if you ever have cause to need it you will be glad you did.

 

I never bother. Reinstalling W7 on my SSD only takes around 15 minutes so I don't see the point of faffing around

 

I have to agree with this statement and I have an external HDD with the drivers for my things like mouse and keyboard, player profiles for COD4 and plus other drivers

 

Thats true if I had an ssd it would be fast enough not to bother but with a raid backup I've got windows, office, steam and some other games already installed. It does save time and I can use the computer while its creating the array so it allows me to have everything ready and usable very quickly.

 

This. Plus, I've always seen system restore as a liability. You can't imagine how many times I've seen virii get backed up in the system restore file and continue to propagate from it. Not worth it, in my opinion.

 

It was worth it back in the day when reinstalling Windows took 3 hours plus laboriously changing driver floppy after floppy to use all your devices. A fresh W7 install works out the box completely for me. It makes more sense to format, which ensures any software issue will sail away (or virus) and start afresh.

 

One thing i do have is a spare large-ish usb stick with all of the programs i use regularly which have to be downloaded. Everything such as what people have been posting in the Free software you cannot live without thread. Saves a hell of alot of time and hassle when reinstalls come around. You dont even need to keep them up to date since virtually everything will tell you there is a newer version the first time it is ran.