This is why I buy cases that let me hold more than two hard drives. Two of them have all the crap I have saved over the years, program executables, and drivers. One of them has the OS only.
If you know how to format a pc, you can sure as hell install an internal/external hard drive and save lots of time.
I use forums who upload it to megaupload and stuff. 
Don’t store you media files on the c-drive and reformatting is that much easier.
i haven’t formatted my pcs once and they’re as responsive and slick as ever, it’s all a matter of cleaning up the cruft as it builds up, being careful of what you let in, and knowing how to tune it
i’ve heard some people say “well windows builds up shit after a while so you gotta format it periodically…” but i can attest that it’s bullshit, something has to give if your system is crawling like a 486 after a few months
If you only have one HDD:
Partition your massive HDD into three partitions - C:, D: (for your media junk), E: (for HDD images)
If you have two HDD:
Sweet, you’re set. Make sure the second HDD is formatted or able to write data. It doesn’t hurt to have a small partition on this one for HDD images.
Find yourself a copy of Norton Ghost 2003 and put it on a bootable cd.
Now do what you have to do to get a clean install of your Windows OS. I prefer to do this without an internet connection. I’ve had times where simply plugging in your ethernet cable initiated spyware installs. Awesome!
Now with your fresh install, grab your bootable CD, and make the following images.
Image 1: Clean fresh install (go install your security apps now)
Image 2: Image 1 + security/av progs (now go install your windows updates)
Image 3: Image 2 + all windows updates (now go install all your audio video progs)
Image 4: Image 3 + all your audio/video stuff (install your junk progs if you want and create another image if you want)
The beauty of a ghost image is that you can always revert back to a previous state of your HDD by restoring the image using your bootable cd! With the above, you have FOUR options to go with.
You can make ghost images of any partition. You can even ghost the partition with all your por… I mean music.
This is what I do when I have to reinstall an OS on a computer. After creating the image I throw it on a DVD and archive it. This really helps with relatives that always seem to screw up their computer and there is no way to recover from the disaster. Just restore the image and BAM, brand new OS. The restoring takes about 2 minutes (varies with image size).
how do i do that??
theres a weird problem with my hard drive
once i open my comp and it said i had to format my hard drive or else i couldn’t use it
so i formated it and then the space in my hard drive went from 60G to 19.5G and 11.9G WTF??
it’s so weird what should i do??
now i can’t even download anything cuz theres no more space and all my old files are gone! man! it’s so annoying!