Format Hard Drive
How to Guide
Format hard drive
guide.
If your adding a second hard drive Use the interface of
operating system, windows 2000 and XP both have very powerful
disk formatting / partitioning tools.
To use these go to
the start menu , select run , type
compmgmt.msc
you'll get the
computer management screen after a few seconds, there is a
section called Storage, from here a select the sub section of
this called Disk management,
you should now be
able to see all of your disks.
Format hard drive from here you should be able to see the new
disk, right click on it to get the small menu popup, select
create partition, if the partition or partitions have not
already been created.
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format hard drive article
You have a choice here
you can setup the disk as one partition or more, this in effect
gives you three hard drives, for example a 60gb drive you might
want 1 x 60gb partition or 2 x 30gb partition or even 3 x 20gb
partitions.
As it's a second
Drive I'd recommend having just one though, otherwise the amount
of drive letters can get a little confusing, you'll already have
a C drive, this disk may already be partitioned so you might
have a D drive, you might have a CD drive so you could be
starting on E drive for the new disk.
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format hard drive article
After you've selected
your partition(s) , now you need to format the hard drive
you can choose quick
format from here as the drive has only just bee partitioned.
Right click again on
the partition you've just created, now select "Format" now you
have to decide if you want FAT32 or NTFS,
if you're really not
sure why not read some of our other articles on file formats
format hard drive ok
once you've selected, and the format is complete you're all
done.
To format a new
primary or single drive
If this is a new hard
drive read our section " install hard drive " before proceeding
There are a number of
ways to format a new primary hard disk, these really depend on
the Operating system
Windows 2000 and XP
will allow you to format the drive when you begin the Windows XP
or 2000 system install,
to do this boot from
your system CD begin the install procedure and you will be asked
how you wish to prepare the disk,
both systems are very
user friendly and will partition and format the disk for you,
you can even specify the size and how many partitions you want.
The other method is
more involved but if you are using windows ME, 98, or 95b ,this
is what you must do,
it requires you to
use dos, and you can only use FAT32 not NTFS, to begin with
you'll need to get a boot disk,
these can easily be
downloaded from www.bootdisk.com as long as you select the
windows 98 boot disk you'll be able to format the disk for
windows 95b and ME as well
Ok once you've got
the disk, use it to boot from
if you have a new
disk you might have to partition it before you format so
do you need to create
any partitions ? if so type FDISK this will take you to the
partitioning utility
from here select
create new partition follow the prompts and you'll have
partitioned the disk next select make partition active,
you'll need to do
this to make the disk bootable ok now you can quit the
application, you'll be asked to reboot the pc which you must do
boot from the floppy
disk again, once the pc boots up type
Format C:/s the C
refers to the drive letter , so if it's a secondary disk it may
be D
All being well and
good you'll now be up and running
Windows Security , how secure is your
computer ?
Why Choose NTFS over Fat32 ?
Computer Tech Support , for both hardware
and software support
Cleaning hard Drive , how to get your hard
drive in tip top condition format hard drive
If you need help installing a hard drive ,
read our install hard drive guide
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