Umm, why are you formatting the drive? It may be possible to do what's known as a clean install or install to a new directory and save 90% of your data. The process is slightly complicated and a little different depending on what OS you're using, but it's still much less painful than a complete format of the hard drive. I used to do phone support for MS, and I can say for sure that only in the situation where there are hardware issues or virus attacks should it be necessary to format the drive to get a new install of windows. If you haven't already reformatted, I'd look into it.