Reformat External Hard Drive Windows 7

Reformat Windows 7 Hard Drive - If you need to reformat a hard drive using Windows 7, the method you should use depends on whether you want to reformat a bootable drive or a secondary drive. Here are the steps for both procedures. How to reformat a drive. Reformatting a drive on Windows is a pretty straightforward process. However, you need to make doubly sure that you complete a Quick format. A Quick format only deletes the organizational structure of the files on the drive, without removing the actual files. Back up anything you want to keep, such as photos, software product keys, etc. When the hard drive. This page shows how to format/reformat an SD card, USB flash drive, pen stick, etc. On Windows 10, Windows 8 and Windows 7. You can force format SD card in Windows and Command Prompt to repair SD card not formatting issue as well as format SD card for Android devices. It's the most secure, robust file system that a Windows user could wish for. This means it's the format of choice for system drives on Windows computers. NTFS has quite a lot of strong advantages, which may actually make it a good format choice for certain external hard drives, depending on the circumstances.

1. How To Reformat External Hard Drive Mac
2. Reformat External Hard Drive Windows 10

Summary :

What does formatting a hard drive do? Have you ever asked yourself? The first idea occurs to you might be data loss, but that's not all. Brief introductions to disk formatting, the purpose of formatting a hard drive, as well as how to format are talked in this post of MiniTool. To know the details, please read the article with attention.

What Is Formatting

What is formatting? Formatting a hard drive means to delete all the data on the drive and set a file system to prepare an available space for the operating system. Disk formatting is the process of preparing a data storage device such as a hard drive, sloid state drive for initial use. Formatting can be divided into three parts.

In some cases, formatting can also create one or more new file systems. The first part of the formatting process that performs basic media preparation often considered as 'low-level formatting'. Partitioning is a generic term in the second part of the process that makes data storage device visible to the operating system.

The third part of the process, often referred to as 'advanced formatting', usually refer to as the process of generating a new file system. In some operating systems, all parts or certain parts of the process can be combined or repeated at different levels. Therefore, the term 'format' should be understood to mean the operation of the new disk media to fully prepare the file for storage.

If not specified, hard disk formatting refers to high level formatting, while floppy disk formatting usually contains two formats at the same time. Does formatting a disk erase data? No, format is not the same as erase. You are unable to recover your data after erasing it, while there's chance to find it back after formatting.

As most hard disks have been formatted at the factory, formatting is only required when the hard drive media has errors. Do you want to know what does formatting a hard drive do? If you don't know, keep reading.

What Does Formatting a Hard Drive Do

What does format mean to you? Protect your privacy by deleting your private information or cause data loss? In fact, things are not as simple as they look like on the surface. If you have some benefits because of the formatting operation, what are they? On the contrary, if it does harm to you, what's the result?

Here are some things you need to know about formatting a hard drive. There are two most direct effects of formatting a hard drive. The first one is that you can remove all the data on your hard drive, while the second one is that you are able to change file system to NTFS/exFAT/EXT2,3,4.

https://bustorrent.mystrikingly.com/blog/cura-for-biqu. Besides, there are some other effects of formatting hard drive.

Let's analyze its effects one by one.

Remove All the Data on the Hard Drive

One of the most direct effects of formatting a drive is that all the data on the drive will be removed. As a result, you may lose your important data. Hence, making sure your data has been backed up before formatting the drive is crucial.

Change File System

Gmail for windows 7 32 bit. You may have noticed that you can select the file system when you format a hard drive. That means you can change you file system by formatting the drive. When you need to change your drive's file system from NTFS to EXT2/3/4, you can format it.

If you operate this on Windows Disk Management, you cannot finish this operation. Here comes the need of a third-party software to do this. Here, MiniTool Partition Wizard is strongly recommended to you. This software allows you to format a drive to NTFS/exFAT/EXT2,3,4 easily.

Improve Your Computer's Performance

Formatting a hard drive can improve the performance of your computer. Actually, the performance improvement of computer is mainly by cleaning up disk space, cleaning system file and deletion harmful programs.

When computer's the hard drive is formatted or reformatted, all the data on the disk will be erased completely and a new copy of the operating system will be reinstalled. Even though all the operating system files are copied to the formatted hard drive, you still can notice that there is relatively large available space on it.

The extra space results from the formatting process, during which deletes previous unnecessary system files on the hard disk drive. Computer runs faster and performs well when there is more available space. Hence, formatting hard drive can improve the performance on data storage.

After using the computer for a long time, files and codes that run the operating system might be damaged greatly slowing many functions of computer. Hard disk utility programs can clean and fir those files sometimes, but the easiest method to improve performance is to execute a full hard drive format and reinstall all necessary files recovering them to the undamaged condition.

Formatting a hard drive can improve your computer performance through deleting harmful programs during the process. You cannot always notice computer virus and other malicious software, but they might roam the system hard disk and damage some important files.

Spyware and virus are harmful to computer's whole performance. Though virus scanning program and other utility programs can help you delete those malicious projects, they are not always successful.

Reformatting hard disk drive will delete all the files on the computer including harmful files to restore the system to the optimal performance.

Why formatting is necessary? After reading the above text, you might know the reasons.

However, if you format a hard drive accidentally, thus lose all your data, things are totally different. To find the data back, you need a professional tool. Here, MiniTool Partition Wizard is strongly recommended.

Its Data Recovery feature enables you to retrieve your data very easily as long as you don't make any change to the formatted hard drive. It's impossible to recover the data in a formatted hard drive with newly written data.

To know more information about hard drive recovery, please take this post as a reference: Hard Drive Recovery – Recover Lost Data and Restore Lost Partitions

How to Format a Hard Drive

There are three methods for you to format a hard drive: the third-party software - MiniTool Partition Wizard, Disk Management and DiskPart. All of them are convenient to operate and simple, so just choose one as you like. Specific steps to each method are shown as follows.

Through MiniTool Partition Wizard

Formatting a hard drive is rather convenient in MiniTool Partition Wizard. It is a professional partition manager with some powerful features such as: Data Backup, Disk Benchmark, Partition Recovery, etc.

Here is the guide to format a hard drive with MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard to get its main interface. After choosing the target hard drive to format, click the Format Partition feature from the action panel.

Step 2: After setting the partition label, file system for the partition, click the OK button to continue the process.

Step 3: Finally, click Apply to execute the pending operation.

Through Disk Management

You are able to format a hard drive on Windows through Disk Management. If you don't want to use a third-party software, Disk Management is a great choice. Next, I will show you the detailed steps to format a hard drive.

Step 1: Press Windows and R key at the same time to open the Run window. Type diskmgmt.msc in the window, and then click OK.

Step 2: If it's a new hard drive, you need to initialize it before using it. Just as the picture shows. Single click the drive and then select Initialize Disk.

Step 3: Initialize the disk as MBR (Master Boot Record) or GPT (GUID Partition Table). After that, click the OK button to go on.

If it's not a new drive, things are different. Select the Format feature after right clicking the target partition.

Step 4: Set the volume label, file system and alloction unit size for the partition. Otherwise, it will carry out the operation according to the default settings. Then, click OK.

Step 5: Click OK in the pop-up window to finish the formatting operation.

Through DiskPart

DiskPart allows you to format a hard drive, too. It's a simple tool to format a hard drive because you can achieve it just by typing some commands.

Step 1: Press Windows plus R key simultaneously to get the Run window. Type diskpart in the windows and then click OK.

Step 2: Type a series of commands on the DiskPart page. Press the Enter key after typing each command. The following are commands:

• list disk
• select disk N (N stands for the drive you want to format)
• list partition
• select partition N (N stands for the partition you want to format)
• format fs=ntfs quick

For more information about hard drive formatting, please read this post: How to Format a Hard Drive with Ease in Windows 10/8/7?

Conclusion

After reading the post, you must have a deep understanding of disk formatting and why do you need to format your drive. What does formatting a hard drive do? You may know the answers now.

Methods to format a hard drive are also provided for you. So, if you would like to format your hard drive to improve computer's performance or for other reasons, you can choose one from the given methods randomly.

If you encounter any problem or have any question and suggestion to the formatting a hard drive issue, please send an email to [email protected] or leave a comment below.

What Does Formatting a Hard Drive Do FAQ

Here on this page, we'll include two free methods to help you quick format or fully clean up a hard drive on Windows 10/8/7 with ease:

Formatting hard disk, USB flash drive, pen drive, and memory card, etc., is meaningful and helpful in solving some device issues. For examples:

1. e.g. 1. Incompatible file system error:
2. In most cases, you have to convert FAT32 to NTFS or NTFS to FAT32 by formatting so to make storage devices recognizable by Windows, Mac, or other platforms.

e.g. 2. To format and clean hard drive for Windows installation.

1. e.g. 3. The hard drive is corrupted or it contains soft bad sectors:
2. When device access is denied due to the RAW file system, then Windows asks you to format it before you can use it.

DiskPart Format vs Hard Drive Formatting Tool

Generally, there are three ways to initiate the task - Windows quick format (by right-clicking or using Disk Management), Windows DiskPart command, or a free third-party hard drive format tool.

Windows quick formatting is easy to get started but with limited functions, so the last two options become better choices. What's the difference though? And which way fits you the best?

How To Reformat External Hard Drive Mac

Here is a feature comparison list between DiskPart Format Command and EaseUS free formatting tool for you to refer to:

For experienced users, you may run DiskPart command to format the disk on your own with instructions in Fix 1 for help. As a beginner, who prefers an easier resolution, we suggest you try the free formatting tool as an alternative to replace DiskPart format command as recommended in Fix 2.

Download free DiskPart alternative formatting tool:

Fix 1. Format Hard Drive Using DiskPart Format Command

To use DiskPart to format a disk, you need to follow the commands below carefully. Any mistakes will cause serious problems.

Here we'll take the method of formatting hard drive using CMD on Windows 10 as an example to show you to detail steps:

# 1. Quick Format Disk Using DiskPart Format Command

Step 1. Open Command Prompt by right-clicking on the Windows icon, select 'Search' and type: command prompt.

Right-click on Command Prompt and select 'Run as administrator'.

Step 2. Type diskpart in Command Prompt and hit Enter.

Step 3. Type DiskPart format command lines in DiskPart and hit Enter each time so as to quick format hard drive:

• list disk
• select disk 2 (Replace 2 with your disk number)
• list volume
• select volume 10 (Replace 10 with the volume number of the partition that you want to format)
• format fs=ntfs quick (If you need to format a hard drive partition to FAT32 or other file systems, replace NTFS with FAT32, exFAT, etc.)

https://downtfil598.weebly.com/open-source-recording-studio-software.html. Step 4. Type exit and hit Enter to close the program when DiskPart reports it has successfully formatted the volume.

# 2. Fully Clean and Format Disk Using CMD Command in DiskPart

Step 1. On Windows 10, press Windows + X, select 'Search', and type command prompt, right-click on it and choose 'Run as administrator'.

Step 2. On the Command Prompt black window, type diskpart and hit 'Enter'.

Step 3. Now type list disk and press 'Enter'.

All the disk drives will be listed, including your external drives that connected to the computer.

Step 4. Refer to the list disk information, type select disk + disk number, for example, select disk 2 and press enter.

You're telling DiskPart to locate and lock disk 2 so as to clean and format it with the continuing steps.

Step 5. Go on to type clean. This step starts to clean up all files and folders on the selected hard disk.

Step 6. Type create partition primary and press 'Enter'.

Step 7. After DiskPart successfully created the specified partition, type format fs=ntfs (or format fs=exfat) and press 'Enter'. You're telling DiskPart to format the disk to a specific file system, let it be NTFS, exFAT, etc.

Step 8. At last, assign a drive letter to the newly created partition by typing assign.

Step 9. Type exit to close the DiskPart Command Prompt window when the process finishes.

That's a complete guide of formatting hard disk with DiskPart format commands. Cricut craft room download for windows 10.

Fix 2. Format Hard Drive with DiskPart Alternative - Free Formatting Tool

Reformat External Hard Drive Windows 10

The other easier way to format disk is to apply a powerful DiskPart alternative formatting tool - a free partition manager software for help.

Here we'd like to recommend you try EaseUS Partition Master Free. It offers easy steps to help you quickly format or clean up an internal HDD, an external USB stick, pen drive, or an SD card, etc. within only a few simple clicks.

Download EaseUS free disk formatting tool and follow the guide below to see how to format the disk.

The whole process is simpler and smoother than formatting hard drive from using DiskPart command prompt.

# 1. 4-Steps: Quick Format Hard Drive using DiskPart Format Alternative

Step 1: Run EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the hard drive partition you intend to format and choose 'Format'.

Step 2: In the new window, set the Partition label, File system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and Cluster size for the partition to be formatted, then click 'OK'.

Step 3: Then you will see a warning window, click 'OK' in it to continue.

Step 4: Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting the partition on your hard drive.

# 2. Clean Up Hard Drive by Erasing Disk with EaseUS Free Formatting Tool

Compared to the DiskPart clean command, EaseUS Partition Master Free simplifies the whole process in cleaning up a hard drive. Create zip file in windows 10.

With it, you can simply erase everything on a hard drive, leaving it as an empty new drive with full size:

Step 1: Install and launch EaseUS Partition Master.

Select the HDD or SSD which you want to wipe. And right-click to choose 'Wipe Data'.

Step 2: Set the number of times to wipe data.

You can set to 10 at most. Then Click 'OK'.

Step 3: Check the message.

A message tells you that the computer would restart after disk erase is recommended. Then click 'OK'.

Step 4: Click 'Apply' to apply the changes.

Click 'Execute the operation' and then click 'Apply' to start wiping data.

Bottom Line

On this page, we included two major free methods to help you clean and format a hard drive disk by using DiskPart format command lines and DiskPart alternative - EaseUS free formatting tool.

According to many Windows managers and experienced users, you may also try to format a hard drive by using File Explorer and Disk Management on your own.

For quick and smooth operation, EaseUS Partition Master Free should be your best shot.

People Also Ask About Diskpart Format Command

If you are having further DiskPart formatting questions, check the following questions and listed answers for help.

1. How do I use Diskpart?

As DiskPart can execute many operations via different command lines, here we concluded a few of them to help you managing hard disk.

To create a partition: (Open Command Prompt and hit Enter each time.)

• diskpart
• list disk
• select disk 1
• create primary partition size=10000mb (or more)
• format fs=ntfs (or other file system)
• assign letter=D (or other drive)
• exit

More details about extending or deleting partitions with CMD, you may refer to Manage Partitions with CMD.

You may also run DiskPart command to perform the following operations:

1. #1. Format or clean a disk (as shown on this page in Fix 1)
2. #2. Show hidden files using CMD
3. #3. Check and fix disk error using cmd
4. #4. Recover deleted files using command prompt
5. #5. Fix and repair hard drive errors using CHKDSK command

2. How long does DiskPart take to format?

Being it similar to the Windows formatting feature, you can always apply DiskPart format command to format a hard drive within minutes or half an hour, depending on the hard drive capacity and used space on it.

As estimated, to do a 'full' format on a 1TB hard disk in Windows, it will take a long time, like 2- hours, and over a USB 2.0 connection, it may take a day!

Deer hunter 2005 torrent crack keygen. If it gets stuck or takes forever to format a hard drive using DiskPart format cmd, refer to Hard Drive Takes Forever to Format Fixes for help.

3. What is the command to format a partition with the NTFS file systems?

Follow the process to format a partition with NTFS file system:

1. 1. Right-click Windows icon, 'Search', and type 'CMD' and then right-click Command Prompt to select 'Open as Administrator'
2. 2. Type 'list disk' into the command prompt without quotes and hit Enter.
3. 3. Type 'select disk 1' without quotes and hit Enter. (Replace 1 with the disk number of your own hard drive.)
4. 4. Type 'list volume' without quotes and hit Enter.
5. 5. Type 'select volume 1' without quotes and hit Enter. (Replace 1 with the target partition number on your drive.)
6. 6. Type 'format d: /fs: ntfs quick' without quotes and hit Enter. (Replace d: with the drive letter of your target partition.)
7. 7. Type 'exit' and hit Enter to close the command prompt.

For further resolutions, check the How-To page or use the Search option on our website - https:www.easeus.com to find more exact solutions bases on your issues.