Maybe I should keep a spare 10gb hd with my os on it then have two partitions on my main drive for system and programs. Then the fresh os from the hd can go on top of the system partition on my main. Isn't that the greatest and most flawless all-in-one solution?
Sadly, it's not. When you reinstall Windows on the OS drive, it won't know that all your programs are on the other drive, so you'll lose all your shortcuts, registry settings and if you don't know where they are, all the docs that the programs have tucked away on your OS drive that you just formatted. Every likelihood that a good number of them won't work at all ( without reinstallation ) and many of the rest will have lost a lot of your data, config, settings and stuff.
It's not an entirely bad idea, but it still has problems.