re-instilling windows 10

[diabloinfinnity]

i have 4 drives, ca i just delete the drive that the OS is on and keep all my games and programs on my other hard drives.

would this be ok or is it better to delete everything with a fresh install?

[JCP]

2 minutes ago, jackreading007 said:

i have 4 drives, ca i just delete the drive that the OS is on and keep all my games and programs on my other hard drives.

would this be ok or is it better to delete everything with a fresh install?

It *SHOULD* work but you'll have to tell steam, origin, battlenet etc where your games are stored which is pretty easy. It has worked fine for me so the chances it works are pretty high but there is still the chance that it doesn't. I currently have 5 drives in my system (ssd,ssd,ssd,hdd,hdd) and use 3 of them for games and re-installing windows hasn't affected them (i have had to tell steam and origin etc where to find the games).

[diabloinfinnity]

2 minutes ago, Jacobtechtips? said:

It *SHOULD* work but you'll have to tell steam, origin, battlenet etc where your games are stored which is pretty easy. It has worked fine for me so the chances it works are pretty high but there is still the chance that it doesn't. I currently have 5 drives in my system (ssd,ssd,ssd,hdd,hdd) and use 3 of them for games and re-installing windows hasn't affected them (i have had to tell steam and origin etc where to find the games).

Great, thanks bud.

[Uptivuptiz]

I have done the same once. I have 4 drives. What I did was turn off the pc and disconnect all the drives except the one that will get windows re-installed on. And then when the installation was done I plugged the other drives in again.

[RyzenDoctor]

Windows 10 has a built in option for a fresh install btw. You can find it when you search for windows update settings

[homeap5]

2 hours ago, jackreading007 said:

i have 4 drives, ca i just delete the drive that the OS is on and keep all my games and programs on my other hard drives.

would this be ok or is it better to delete everything with a fresh install?

No, you cant. All programs, even installed on external drives, writes their configurations on C drive. Some even need special registry entries to work. You'll loose almost all configurations, game saves (except when you use cloud save) etc. Clean install should be your last option if your system works really bad and you don't know how to fix it. Otherwise try to fix real problems. If you don't know how - ask us.