First of all, you need to understand what formatting is. This is the process by which your drive is cleared of the information on it. It is used most often in cases where it is necessary to quickly free the disk from the contents and write other data to it. Or before installing the operating system. How can one perform such an operation? To do this, there is a program for formatting the hard disk. Before using it, take care of the safety of the necessary files and documents, copy them, for example, to an external drive.
Formatting using the control panel
The very first way to clean your drive is to use your own computer capabilities. To use them, you need to use the control panel of your device. In this section, select “Disk Management” and see all the available options: assign labels and names, create partitions, perform the formatting we need so much more.
Find the drive or partition we need, point the mouse at it, right-click and select “formatting”. This option is convenient in that we initially see all the drives connected to the computer, even those that are inactive and we won’t see them in the explorer window. Before starting the procedure, in the window that appears, it is possible to make some settings. You can change the volume label, that is, the name of the selected drive, select the cluster size and file system type. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that these parameters are already pre-configured and set, so you can not touch them, except when there is an exact purpose of the changes.
Further, the program for formatting the hard disk offers to choose full format or fast, which are significantly different from each other. If the first option deletes data as efficiently as possible, without the possibility of recovery, then with the second one the disk will be recognized as empty, but if desired, information from it can be restored. It is recommended to use it with confidence in the full performance of the media.
Using Explorer Window
The method described above is not the only solution to our task. It is possible to format the disk even faster. To do this, it is enough, having opened “My Computer”, to get to all active
logical drives. Then we select the one we need, right-click to open the menu and click on the “formatting” item.
Before us is another program for formatting a hard disk. Using the opened window with additional settings, you can adjust various operation parameters. At the same time, remember that the actual disk capacity is less than the data provided by us from the manufacturer. For example, a 2 TB disk will actually have an available space of 1.81 TB.
How to format a system drive?
If the operating system is on the disk, then of course it cannot overwrite itself, so you have to use other methods. Why do this? This procedure is performed if a new one will be installed on the system drive with the current OS. To do this, insert the installation disk with the operating system into the computer / laptop. It will start and make a proposal to start the installation. You just have to follow the instructions for performing this operation.
First, from two of its types, we select the installation from scratch, we ignore the option to update the system. On the used hard disk, you can create and delete logical partitions, perform accelerated formatting. Then we continue to install the OS or, removing the disk, continue to work on the computer.
We looked at Windows 7th version. In Windows Vista and Windows XP, all actions are similar. But if you maintain the system disk, it is preferable to use third-party boot disks called Live CD.
Free hard drive formatting program
To format any information storage devices, including hard drives connected to the device, you can use the HDD Low Level Format Tool. System utilities are, of course, a good thing, but it is better to perform high-quality cleaning using third-party software. The above utility is small, convenient, supports working with different interfaces, for example, with SATA, IDE, USB, Fir, SCSI. You can service devices from the following manufacturers: Seagate, Maxtor, Fujitsu, Samsung, Quantum, Toshiba, IBM. Also works with flash cards.
What else is this program good for?
The low-level formatting of the hard disk is its main merit. It destroys absolutely all the data that is recorded on the media, without missing and boot sectors with separated logical partitions. Remember that it will not be possible to recover deleted information.
How does the HDD Low Level Format Tool work?
Download the distribution, run and install. This is done so simply that we will not dwell on this in detail. After that we read the license agreement and choose: we use the free version or we pay extra three dollars thirty cents and we get an updated and faster program. We choose the first option. The only drawback of this utility is that every time you start it, you will have to see and remove the window with an offer to pay this money.
The interface is very simple. You will immediately see which drive devices are connected to the computer and ready to go. In the presence of various data on these devices, different background information.
We will carry out testing. We will not experiment with the hard drive, we use a regular USB flash drive with a capacity of 4 GB. Select it from the list and click on the “Continue >>>” button. We will see the characteristics of the flash drive and the start / stop button for formatting. Before starting the process, the program will specify whether you really want to start it. In the window, you can monitor the progress of the operation.
The peculiarity of the free version is its low speed (4.3 Mb / s), so everything will last about 10 minutes. HDD Low Level Format Tool not only formats your drive, but also can “repair” it if the computer does not see the USB flash drive.
How else can you format a hard drive?
One of the most powerful and functional utilities for this is Acronis. This hard disk formatting program is regularly updated and keeps up to date. It is paid, but also has a free trial. So if you like the utility, you can purchase a full version. System requirements are not too large, so you can install it on almost every computer.
There are many options for cleaning the disk , the choice is yours.