Formatting a hard drive or USB drive is the process of completely removing information from these devices. Sometimes this procedure is accompanied by a change in the file system type and the creation of new partitions.
Necessary
Windows installation disc
Instructions
Step 1
There are many ways to format a hard drive or partitions. To perform this procedure using the Windows Management Shell, you must run it with administrator rights on the computer. Open the Start menu and click the Run button.
Step 2
After opening a new menu, enter the cmd command and press the Ctrl, Shift and Enter keys at the same time. If the Command Prompt opens without using administrator rights, restart your computer. After the user selection window appears, log in using an account that has sufficient rights. Repeat the described procedure for starting the Shell.
Step 3
Enter the command Diskpart and press Enter. Now enter List Disk and press Enter again. Find out the letter assigned to the hard disk partition you want to format.
Step 4
Enter the command format D: and press the Enter key. Naturally, in this example, D is the drive letter assigned by the system to the selected partition. When a line appears warning that all data from the disk will be deleted, press Y. Wait until the formatting of the partition or disk is complete.
Step 5
This method does not allow formatting the hard disk partition on which the currently installed operating system is used. If you want to format the system disk partition, restart your computer after inserting the Windows installation disc into the drive.
Step 6
After starting the installation menu, select Recovery Console (Windows XP) or Command Prompt (Windows Vista and 7). Wait for the console to start and enter the Format C: command. Be sure to make sure you enter the correct drive letter. To check, use the method described in the third step. You can also type dir / w to view the contents of the selected drive and make sure the correct drive letter is selected.
