There may come the time in which you need or want to format a hard drive. In this guide, we take a look at how to do this in a few different situations. Before formatting your hard drive, it is important that you backup any files, docs, folders, etc that you wish to keep. When you go through the format process, it will completely clear your hard drive, thus clearing all files on the disk.
Formatting your hard drive could help you resolve issues that ordinarily cannot be fixed or repaired easily. For example, if you just can’t get rid of a virus, formatting will surely knock it out. I always like to consider this a last ditch effort after I have tried removing via my antivirus software.
There are two ways to format a hard drive. One way is by inserting a Windows installation disc booting from the disk, and then following the instructions for formatting. Secondly, formatting a hard drive can be done via the computer management tool in windows. Let’s take a look at this 2 methods.
Format Using Computer Management Tool
To format a secondary hard drive using the Computer Management Tool, click “Start” -> “Administrative Tools” -> “computer management” or right click on “My Computer” and select “manage”. This will take you to the computer management window.
On the computer management screen, double-click “disk management” under the “storage” tab. Now you can begin by selecting the partition you want to delete. To delete all the partitions, you have to do it one at a time. Right-click the partition box and select the partition, press and confirm deletion. After you do this, the box will read unallocated.
To create a primary partition, right click the box and select “new partition”; a new partition wizard will appear. Select the size and drive letter. The wizard will take you on a step-by-step guide to creating this new partition.
I would highly recommended that you choose NTFS, which is better than FAT, for the formatting option. For a new drive, you can do a quick format if you want. Be sure to leave “Enable File and Compression” unchecked before clicking next because formatting begins when you click next. While the formatting is taking place, make sure you do not close the Computer Management window. You can only use the new drive to store data after the formatting is complete and the status will change from formatting to healthy.
Format and install a clean OS
To format a hard drive and install a new or clean Windows Operating system insert the Windows Installation disc and restart the computer. Make sure you boot from this Windows OS CD/DVD.
Follow the instructions to the point where you are asked to identify the location where you want the OS to be. Available partitions will show, and you can select a partition file to format the hard drive. First press the D key to delete the hard drive and L key to confirm deletion. The formatting begins. After the formatting is finished, you will see “un-partitioned space”. Click on it and press the C Key to create a new partition. Select the volume for reinstalling the OS. At this point you will have to go through the Windows install process to install the clean operating system. Keep in mind that you will also have to install all software again and restore your files from your previously made backup.
After the install process finishes, you should be all set with a newly formatted hard drive and clean install of Windows.