Windows has made it extremely difficult to save emails and bookmarks and address books.... Those and a few other things you don't want to lose are generally buried deeply in the windows directory.... I presume you use IE and Outlook Express.......... It once was easy, but in the more recent versions I've dealt with, they have eliminated the easy way of doing things. I use Firefox and Thunderbird......... though I haven't used Windows except for a single mission critical application for many years now.......... It may be better in the newer versions again.... I don't know. It was so bad for awhile that people sold software just for that purpose.
This does not match my experience. I don't know much about Linux, but I know Windows like the back of my hand. With the push to move to the cloud by the big email providers (MS, Google, Yahoo, etc), for most people their mail is stored on the mail providers' servers these days, as opposed to being downloaded and stored locally via a POP3 client as it typically has been in the past. This makes accessing your old email on a new computer or after an OS reinstall as simple as logging in via the web or installing a mail client and syncing with the mail server. MS discontinued support for Outlook Express a few years ago and has pushed most users who still prefer to use a local mail client into Windows Live Mail. Users who have MS Office can also choose to use Outlook. I used to use Thunderbird as it was a better alternative to Outlook Express, but ditched it a few years back in favor of Windows Live Mail, which I consider to be a pretty decent client platform.
Bookmarks, or more accurately for IE, Favorites, are stored in either the \Documents and Settings\[User]\Favorites folder (Win2000 & XP) or the \Users\[User]\Favorites folder (Windows Vista, 7, & 8) in the root of the system drive. The same is true for the user's Desktop and My Documents folders. Backing them up is as straightforward as browsing to the location and copying them to thumb drive or external HDD, then copying them back on a new system or after OS reinstall on the old system. For the majority of users, the only folders that need to be backed up before a wipe/reinstall or transfer to a new system are the Favorites, Desktop, & My Documents folders for each user profile.
Of all the browsers, I prefer IE, but I do keep Firefox installed as there are some sites that just don't run very well on IE, so I use Firefox for those. There are some things about Firefox, however, that annoy me, which is why I don't use it as my primary browser.
Newer versions of windows save your old windows stuff in a directory when you do a new install.........This is NOT a blessing if you are infected, as the infection remains. My rule with Windows is to do an Fdisk....... Which is a capability that no longer comes with a windows install disk. Fdisk wipes the partitions out completely and prevents anything from before from corrupting your new install. All Linux installations have Fdisk as far as I know....... It's part of the installation process. I normally use one of these when I want to wipe a Windows disk, and reinstall Windows for someone.
All versions of Windows have the Fdisk utility, which just overwrites the partition table on the master boot record. It doesn't actually delete any files, which is why Fdisk is not a secure method of wiping hard drives before discarding them. That can only be done by writing new data to every sector on the physical disks.
Fdisk can be accessed from the GUI by choosing a custom installation of Windows, where you will have the option to delete and recreate disk partitions. I can not think of too many cases in which you would not want to nuke the existing OS partition and create a new one before reinstalling Windows. Maybe if you're trying to repair a problem would you want to install over the top of another Windows installation, but since that rarely works, it's best to delete and recreate the OS partition so that you are installing Windows cleanly.
I often split the physical drive into two partitions, which become drives C & D, then install Windows on C and use D for drivers and data storage. That way if the OS becomes corrupt or infected, you can delete/recreate the C partition and reinstall Windows, leaving all of your important files, including the hardware drivers you will need to reinstall, still sitting unmolested on the D drive. I've found that viruses, trojans, and malware will usually keep themselves contained to the C drive, so the D drive tends to stay clean, though it is possible to get an infected file on a drive that does not contain the OS. If you do choose to go this route, just make sure you back up your data from the D drive before messing with partitions. In close to 20 years and hundreds of Windows installations, I did have one instance where the D partition became unreadable after deleting and recreating the C partition, so be sure to back up your data in the off chance that something goes south or you accidently delete the wrong partition.
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