How to Format Your Hard Drive in Windows 7

 
If you are running Windows 7 and need to format the hard drive that it is installed on, follow these simple steps below. Keep in mind that by formatting your hard drive, you are deleting all of the files, folders and other documents or programs that are installed, so be sure to back up your system before you begin.


Let's Begin:



· Open the Windows 7 Disk Management Utility and locate the drive in which you want to format. If you do not see your hard drive listed in the box or you get an Initialize Disk window you most likely have not partitioned the hard drive yet.

· You will need to partition the hard drive before you will be able to continue, so if you get this message, partition the drive then come back to the next step once completed.

· With the drive located that is to be formatted, right click and choose "Format"


Be sure you have the correct drive selected before you begin the formatting process; once it begins there is no way to retrieve the information.



· In the Volume Label you will need to assign your drive a name, by default Windows 7 will name the drive "New Volume" If you are using this drive for something specific such as movies or animation files, name it as such so you can easily find it in the future.

· Choose NTSF for the file system

· Set your Allocation unit size to Default unless you have a specific reason to customize it.

· Uncheck the perform a quick format in order to do a standard full format.

· Be sure that the Enable file and folder compression box is unchecked.

· Click Ok at the bottom of the window then Ok again to begin the formatting process.


The formatting process can take a long time and really depends on the size of your hard disk. While it would only take a few seconds to format a 2GB drive it could take a couple hours to format a 2T drive.


Once the format reaches 100% you will see the status change to Healthy . The hard drive, once formatted completely will be ready to install with a new operating system and begin using it to store files, folders and run programs.