I tend to format and reinstall my operating system fairly frequently (about once a month). I apologize for my lack of technical terms, but I do not perform a "full format" (the type of formatting that zeros-out the existing data). Regardless, I know that most modern operating systems consume several GBs of data.
Is doing this particular damaging to my hard drives? Would it matter whether I'm using a solid state drive (I'm not)?
Best Answer
Whether or not it is SSD, the more usage of a drive will reduce its life. However a format once a month isn't going to do much compared to any other program.
I'd suggest figuring out why you are formatting and reinstalling once a month and trying to solve that.
If you 'like' to format and reinstall, then think about using a disk imaging software such as Ghost, or install Windows 7, create a system image, and then restore from backup, save yourself some headache.