How to save some data before formatting hard drive

[MexicanPombear]

Is there any way to put save all of my steam data on my hard drive, and format the rest? I want to wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows, but keep all of my steam games and data so I do not have to reinstall them all, and I'd rather not get an external hard drive.
In case it's important, I have about 600GB of steam games installed.
Thanks in advance

 

[USAFRet]

Well...you need somewhere to save it to. An external drive is easiest and fastest.

(your other applications will need to be reinstalled, though)

 

[MexicanPombear]

Well...you need somewhere to save it to. An external drive is easiest and fastest.

(your other applications will need to be reinstalled, though)

So I wouldn't be able to, say, create a partition of some sort to store the data I want to keep, and format the rest of the drive?

 

[USAFRet]

Well...you need somewhere to save it to. An external drive is easiest and fastest.

(your other applications will need to be reinstalled, though)

So I wouldn't be able to, say, create a partition of some sort to store the data I want to keep, and format the rest of the drive?

You can, but that is far riskier than having that critical data on another drive and offline during the process.
Far too many times, a misclick during the install, and all is gone.

 

[sparky29]

I've got a similar question so I hope I'm not hijacking the thread.
I've got a virus on my laptop that I can't get rid of so I want to take the opportunity to upgrade from XP to Win 7.
Can I partition the hard drive, format and install Win 7 on one partition and then transfer all my data over to that drive.
Then change the drive that my laptop boots from to Win 7 and then format the drive with XP on it
Hope this makes sense.
Thanks for any replies

 

[USAFRet]

I've got a similar question so I hope I'm not hijacking the thread.
I've got a virus on my laptop that I can't get rid of so I want to take the opportunity to upgrade from XP to Win 7.
Can I partition the hard drive, format and install Win 7 on one partition and then transfer all my data over to that drive.
Then change the drive that my laptop boots from to Win 7 and then format the drive with XP on it
Hope this makes sense.
Thanks for any replies

Even riskier than the above.
Save you personal, critical, prescanned data elsewhere.
Wipe the drive and install.

 

[sparky29]

Thanks USAFret