How to Format a Hard Drive ?
Formatting a hard drive removes viruses and trojans, and resolves other storage and hard-to-solve issues. However, ensure that you back up your important data, as the formatting process will wipe out all the data on the drive. The procedure to format the hard drive depends on whether you want to format the secondary hard drive, or the primary hard drive and install Windows XP on it.
Steps to be followed in order to format a secondary hard drive are as follows:
- Search for the My Computer icon in your computer; right-click it, and select Manage from the options.
- A new window named Computer Management will pop up on the screen. Select Storage from the options available on the left side, and then select “Disk Management (local)” from the options available on the right side. Double-click Disk Management to select it. Now you’ll see a list of the all the available partitions on your hard disk. A hard drive is divided into small partitions to utilize the space effectively.
- Delete the partition you want to delete from the hard drive. If you wish to remove all the partitions, delete all the partitions one by one. Right-click the partition’s box, and select Delete Partition from the options. Click Yes to confirm the deletion.
- Now you’ll see a box that reads Unallocated. You need to right-click the box, and then select New Partition from the options. The New Partition Wizard will now appear. Step through the wizard and choose the Primary Partition; then choose the appropriate size and drive letter. Finally, the wizard will ask you if you wish to format the new partition. You may choose NTFS or FAT32; NTFS is faster and more secure. Also, leave the Allocation Unit Size to default, and enter the drive letter in the Volume Label field. If the drive has never been used before, then check Perform a Quick Format, otherwise leave it unchecked. Also, leave the Enable File and Folder Compression unchecked, and click Next to format the drive.
- The wizard will now start formatting the drive; while it is formatting the drive, do not close the Computer Management window. The formatting is complete when the status changes to Healthy from Formatting. You may now use the newly formatted drive to store data.
Steps to be followed in order to format a hard drive and install Windows XP on it:
- Once you’ve backed up important files to a portable storage device, insert the bootable Windows XP installation disc and restart your computer. When you see the message “Press any key to boot from the CD,” press a key to do so.
- A blue screen will show up, and the setup program will now load all the required files. This can take a while, so don’t panic; be patient. Press the enter key when you see a message “Press Enter to set up Windows XP.”
- Now your screen will show all the partitions available on your hard disk. Select the partition where you wish to install Windows XP. Press the D key, and then press the L key to confirm the deletion. Repeat the process for all the partitions that you wish to format/delete.
- Now you’ll see “Un-partitioned Space” in place of the list of the partitions. Select this box, and press C key to create a new partition. Now, select the size for the new partition. You’ll now go to the screen that will read something like this: “C: Partition 1.” Select the partition and press the enter key; on the next screen, select the file system to be used to format the drive. You may choose either NTFS or FAT32 file system. Formatting will now begin.
- You may need to wait for some minutes as it takes time to format the hard drive. The time required to format the hard drive depends on the processor speed and the size of the hard drive. Once the format procedure is complete, a new screen will show up that will guide you through the installation of Windows XP.
Steps to be followed for Linux or BSD:
- Use a diskette or a live-CD to boot the system.
- Open the terminal window, and type the su command to login as the root.
- Now, type mkfs.ext2 /dev/hdnaa , where you may replace ext2 with the file type you want to use; you may replace naa by the letter of the drive and the number of partitions you want to format.
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