Reformat all hard drives during windows install or just the one with windows?

[BeepBoo]

I'm keenly aware that you should reformat the drive windows is being installed on if you're doing a fresh build and reusing the hard drive. I've built 4 PCs with no issue thus far.

However, currently I have 2 SSDs. One is strictly for games, the other is for normal system stuff.
I plan to reformat the normal system stuff drive (the drive windows is currently installed on).

My question is: can I avoid reformatting the games hard drive so I don't need to re-download hundreds of gigs of crap and reinstall them?

[Logwyn]

I'm keenly aware that you should reformat the drive windows is being installed on if you're doing a fresh build and reusing the hard drive. I've built 4 PCs with no issue thus far.

However, currently I have 2 SSDs. One is strictly for games, the other is for normal system stuff.
I plan to reformat the normal system stuff drive (the drive windows is currently installed on).

My question is: can I avoid reformatting the games hard drive so I don't need to re-download hundreds of gigs of crap and reinstall them?

I thought it was better to zero the drive instead of formatting it?

[Shakadam]

My question is: can I avoid reformatting the games hard drive so I don't need to re-download hundreds of gigs of crap and reinstall them?

Yes, no reason to reformat that drive.

[BeepBoo]

When I say reformatting, I mean wiping it to 0's and reinstalling fresh, yes. I'm more concerned with if I need to do that to the other drive that doesn't have any of the windows stuff on it. It's formatted as NTFS, I just don't know things well enough (for instance , zeroing out the drive or formatting it also blows away the registry) so I was hoping someone more knowledgeable could enlighten me.

My hope would be that the drive essentially functions like an external harddrive or a glorified USB drive and I can just unplug/plug it anywhere and run my games from it

Yes, no reason to reformat that drive.

Much obliged! My ISP thanks you

[Temp name]

I'd only wipe the windows drive clean. If you aren't a stickler, you could even just.. Not do that, and it'll be fine. That said you'll have a bunch of files you don't need taking up space and maybe conflicting if you don't wipe windows