This is a handy concept, but not a lot of people do it.  Simply put, all of the programs that you normally install on your system are on one big hard drive.  And I mean everything except the Windows install disc, itself.  Assuming you’ve got hard drive space to burn and you’ve got a printer CD with fifteen trillion drivers on it and you only need one of them, who cares if it’s a gigantic waste of drive space?  The driver will install much quicker in the future coming off the hard drive, and that’s all that counts.

No files are in Zip format, everything is in their own folder, Setup icon at the ready.  Any registration numbers are in a ‘readme.txt’ file in the program folder.  The main folders are organized to mimic the hard drive folders, such as Audio, Games, Graphics, Tools, etc, then the individual program folders are inside of those.

I also have a "Windows" folder which has a few sub-directories in it, such as "Media", "Cursors" and "Command", where I have my own custom sound files, pointers and DOS commands.  Come installation time, I simply drag the Windows folder from the Install drive over to the C Drive, get the "File already exists" message, click "Yes to all", and it dumps the extra goodies where they belong.

If and when you’ve reinstalled Windows and it’s time to install your programs, they’re just a click away.  No fussing with CDs, no un-zipping, no time wasted.  And seriously large programs, like MS Office Suite, will install twice as quick from the hard drive as from a CD.