On Sun, 9 Apr 2017 08:56:27 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

One advantage to re-imaging is that while I don't do it regularly,
when I have done it, the PC performance improvement was substantial.
In fact, I think when people buy a new PC and see a huge increase
in performance, I'd bet that a good part of that, maybe half, is
that they are starting with a clean machine again. If they just
did a system restore, they'd also see a good boost in performance.

True dat.

That is one reason why I like to keep data on a separate drive.
Then you can just reload the original C: and start as a virgin without
losing any of your data.
Keep all of your data on D:, Keep all of your executables on C:
Go in and change the target in your programs from "my documents" to
"D:\documents" and create separate directories for each program.
The first time I load a system it takes a few hours to actually get
all of the updates, software loaded and configured. Then I image that
drive after I get things the way I like it and I can get back there in
a few minutes if something bad happens.
A huge advantage of having all of your data on a separate drive is you
can use regular drag and drop tools to manage it.
C: stays relatively small so the image restores quickly and you can
maintain lots of incremental images in a fairly small space.