How many of you re-install your operating system on a regular basis, or perhaps have some-one around to do it for you?  I only do it when things get so bad I have no choice.  Now that I have a larger hard-drive I'm hoping "bad" is a longer way off than it used to be.

Things change so darn fast, and my computer is like a 16-lane expressway in rush hour.  Changes in organization, incomplete projects, abandoned projects, 50 unanswered emails, what year is this, where am I?  How well is this present arrangement serving what I'm presently doing, planning to do?  And gee whiz, how did all this junk get in here?

I am cleaning, cleaning, cleaning up around here.  It's fantasy I'm sure but I'm actually trying to catch up.  So, here's the plan.  Everyday I try to knock at least one thing off the long list on my bulletin board.  When I add one thing, I try to knock off two.  It sounds logical.  At that rate I should get to the bottom someday.  How many years I've had this theory I can't remember.  

So, on the path to better organization, I made it back around to my Installers folder.  Somewhere along the road of operating system re-installations, it occurred to me that it would make good sense to keep a folder of installers, instead of re-downloading them every time, so that's what I do.  Every few months I whiz through there and download updated versions of all the programs I have and want to keep.  If I'm forced into a re-installation through catastrophic failure, it makes it quite a bit easier.  If I can see it coming, it's easier if I have my accustomed programs ready to go.  At the same time I prune out all the junk I've tried and don't want anymore.

Some installer files are somewhat obscurely named.  It's a good idea to drop each of these into a folder with a name that tells you what it actually is.  

I also keep a sub-folder in there for the Portables.  Yesterday, I spent the entire day re-doing my PortableApps.  The reason it took me the entire day is that I had purchased a new flash-drive.  A 4 GB Sandisk, U3-compatible, retractable with key-ring instead of neck strap, the whole nine yards, except titanium built to withstand the weight of a small car, all at an irresistibly low price.  Although I'm perfectly happy with the OpenSource PortableApps I've been using, I had to give U3 a try.  

U3 is handily set up for you to go straight from the Launch Pad to U3 Central, a repository for U3-compatible software.  There's quite a few free programs there.  One I tried was useless and another one crashed, but there's also many for sale.  Somebody was bound to come up with this idea; selling software for flash-drives.  Fiddling around with this and that took some hours and it wasn't at all worth it, so in the end I un-installed U3 from the drive, (a maddening process as it insisted I had two U3-drives and froze.)  Compared to PortableApps, U3 is pretty tacky. IMHO.  So I updated and re-installed all the PortableApps software and others from the Portable Freeware Collection, and poof, there went another day.

I also keep copies of all the important CD software I have because you just never know when a CD will go bad.  My operating system disk, for instance - toast, I found out today.  Good thing I have a spare.  (This is also a good time to make sure you have all your serial numbers in a handy place like KeePass.)  Just insert a disk, right-click and click Open instead of letting it run.  Copy all that to a folder and zip it up.  Voilà, extra copy.  

Back all this up to your external-drive, or Mozy or wherever you back things up to.  You do back up your data, don't you ...