So it looks like my 2TB HDD has died - I have a back up of the data so nothing important is lost
The windows Boot disk is on an SSD so W10 still boots but....
The old HDD was partitioned into 3
D: Programs
E: Data
F: Games

The "Programs" partition was all s/w I used with the exception of (On C:)

Windows
Office
Anti-Virus
and a few other key bits of s/w that I wanted speed for

All other applications were on D and gates on E
I have all in the installation programs for those I have "lost" on D so no issues there BUT of course windows things they are still all there and I cant uninstall (unless us Reg-edit them)

I wonder if its easier to just re-install windows from scratch rather than try and tidy up / remove the apps. I could now put all the programs on C as its bigger than the original one so don't need to be quite to careful (about 110 GB free)

Thoughts ?

I have nice new shiny HDD which I have installed (Different drive letters just in case)

a clean install will save some heart ache with the win reg. win 10 is better then most other win systems in this regard but it still throws up tantrums. and if you have all the programs and other data then a clean install works wonders. also win 10 should re-register auto for you ...

Windows 10 has a "power wash" mode. You can tell it to refresh the install and remove all installed programs, your "data" - if your profile is on C: and wasn't on the HDD will remain intact.

That is quicker and easier than a full re-install.

If your profile is also gone, you can do a complete reset.

You can access it from the Settings app, under Update and Security, there is a re-build/reset or similarly named menu, on my German machine it is between problems and activation in the list on the left hand site.

Try the link below for a more thorough description
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/window ... pware-free

Big_D - cheers for that - I will have a look - I have only ever done "proper" wipe and re-installs

I can look at C and make sure there is not data on it (there should not be as even the "downloads" location was set for the HDD as I used to have an old 120GB SSD and just cloned it over when I got the newer 240GB

A job for Easter weekend I think


Of course what I should do it tell SWMBO that the PC is knackered and that I need to buy a nice new one but this one will do for a few more years yet (with maybe a graphics card and 2K monitor upgrade when I have saved up)

let us know how 'power wash' works as i have never used it, cheers ...

Will do -its an Easter weekend job

Well I replaced my old HDD over Easter

I used the Re-install Windows but keep your personal data option
That went very quickly - say under 20 mins and once I logged on with my Microsoft account it prompted to confirm my PIN log-on

All went well

It produced a list (which I then printed off) of programmes it had not re-installed - so basically everything
That was useful as I was able to go down it and re-install (and not put all of the junk back on) knowing I had not missed anything vital

Then copied the data back over

Still some tidying up and programmes to install but overall reasonably painless

I must look at a more structured back-up system. I had all the data in multiple places so need to be a bit more logical
Also need maybe to image the whole system a bit more frequently – I did have a system image but it was to old to really be anything other than a last gasp solution
As the SSD is larger I will now have all the programmes on the SSD and just data on the HDD (and games). After 90% of stuff installed I still have over 100Gb free on the SSD. (I had programmes split onto the HDD as my 1st SSD as only 64Gb so only just big enough and I had kept the same structure)

I use rsync to copy everything to a second drive, and from there to my NAS and I use Carbonite to backup everything on my local computer to the cloud.

If the PC dies or gets stolen, I have all my data on my NAS for a quick restore. If the NAS gets stolen or destroyed, I have a further backup in the cloud for a slow restore (days).

I have been playing with FreeFileSync for this

I even have a directory now that updates between the PC, Laptop and NAS in real(ish) time

Just got to see if its stable