dolsh
David Murphy
1/06/21 10:08pm

all of my personal data sits within my main C:\Users folder

Rookie mistake. If you’re seriously going to re-install Windows regularly, or as I’d prefer it, if you’re going to use Windows 10 regularly, do not use your boot drive as User storage. Most purchased PC’s support this now (though not all laptops). I have another disagreement with the article, but I’ll get to that at the end.

Your boot drive should be windows and applications only. A separate physical disk is your User folder, Documents, Media, Games, etc.

This makes backup really easy... //

With the above, it only takes about a half hour to reinstall, configure, and kick off restoring applications and games. I used to do this quite often. Now, it’s really only when I have a significant enough hardware upgrade to warrant it.

So my main disagreement is that you need to reinstall Windows 10 at all. There was a time when applications embedded themselves in system startup, and even a technical Windows user would find their Windows installation slowing down over time. This just doesn’t happen with Windows 10. My current installation dates back to the Windows 7 to Windows 10 upgrade. The IT departments of my last two companies have experienced the same thing across thousands of desktops. The tools built into Windows 10 allow for managing application installs and determining what’s running much better than several years ago. I’ve found that when applications slow Windows down, I can remove them and preformance returns. That wasn’t always possible. There was a time when you needed to know what sysinternals and hijack-this were to keep it all running well.