Format Hard Drives on a Windows Until It’s Clean. How-tos!

Format Hard Drives – A hard disk is a piece of hardware on a computer or laptop that has the function of storing data, such as system files, application files, documents, videos, photos, and so on. Therefore the hard disk is an important component in a computer device.

The most important thing this piece of hardware has is the data that is stored in it. A hard disk or HDD (hard disk drive) is a non-volatile memory, which means data stored on the HDD is not lost when the whole machine is turned off.

Based on the way they connect to the computer, there are four types of hard disks. IDE (Integrated Device Electronics) or PATA (Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment) hard disks, SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) hard disks, SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) hard disks, and the latest one is Solid State Drive (SSD).

Format Hard Drives on Laptops and PCs. How-tos and tips.

Many users pay little attention to the data they store. So many files or data that are not important accumulate on the hard disk. And as a result, the hard disk is full and no data nor files can be added anymore. In some cases, the hard drive even ceases to function because of its full capacity.

When this happens, it’s such a chore to manually delete files or data one by one. Therefore formatting the hard disk will make the job complete faster. It is easy to do, and you can do it on all versions of Windows and all types of hard disks.

To do this, please read this article to the end, because we provide ways to do it below.

Via the Windows Explorer Program

The first way to Format Hard Drives, you can do is to take advantage of the built-in features of the Windows system, namely Windows Explorer. In this way, you can specifically format the drives you want.

But keep in mind if you want to format it this way, make sure that you have moved important data to a safe place.

So, here’s how to format the hard disk via Windows Explorer:

1. In the first step, press the Windows + E combination key on your keyboard.
2. After that, you will enter the File Explorer window.
3. Here, look at the hard disk partition that you want to format, for example, C, D, or E.
4. Once you see the one you want, right-click on the drive, then click Format.
5. Next, set the file system as NTFS (default), optionally you can also label the hard drive.
6. After that, check the Quick Format section.
7. Please click the Format button for the next step.
8. Next, click Start to start formatting the hard disk.
9. Wait until the process is complete.

Using Disk Management

The second way to Format Hard Drives using Disk Management. This tool is an internal tool that is built into the Windows OS. Disk Management is useful for managing hard disk configurations, SSDs, flash drives, and similar storage media. It has quite a lot of functions, such as changing drive letters, creating or merging partitions, formatting disk drives, and others.

The following are the steps to format using Disk Management:

1. Press the Windows key + R combination.
2. After the Run window appears, type in diskmgmt.msc, then Enter.
3. the Disk Management window will then appears.
4. Here, select the drive you want to format.
5. Right-click on the drive, then select Delete Volume.
6. Then just click OK.
7. This will erase all the partitions in the hard drive, but this won’t format the hard drive. So you need to take an additional step, which is to create a new partition from the free space you created earlier.

How to do it:

• Select the partition that you deleted earlier or the free space that is just been available.
• Right-click on the free space.
• After that, select New Simple Volume.
• In the next step, all you have to do is follow the instructions on the screen.
• Done.

Via Command Prompt Disk Part

The third way to Format Hard Drives you can using Command Prompt is quite a common thing to use. Command Prompt is a DOS command in text form. With CMD you can run or access certain features on the Windows OS. With this tool, you can use similar features to Windows Explorer.

Many things can be done through the command prompt, one of which is to format the hard disk drive. But keep in mind that formatting the HDD means you will delete all the data on the disk partition. Therefore, don’t forget to save important data in a safe place.

So, to do this, please follow the steps below:

1. Open the Run window by pressing the Windows + R key combination.
2. After a new tab appears, please type CMD, then click OK.
3. After that, you will enter the Command Prompt window.
4. In this window please type Diskpart, then press Enter.
5. Next type List Disk and press Enter again.
6. Then select the disk you want to format. For example, for disk 1, so you have to type the command select disk 1 then Enter.
7. Type Clean and then press Enter again after that.
8. Next, type the command Create Partition Primary then Enter.
9. Type format fs=ntfs then press Enter for the next step.
10. Finally, please type assign and press Enter.
11. Done, you have successfully formatted the hard drive. To be sure, you can check File Explorer.

Using a low-level format hard drive tools

This format method is unusual. Because the low-level format is an external format method that can clean it up through the roots. So this method is very suitable for those of you who want to format the HDD thoroughly.

Here’s how you do it:

1. First, search on Google for the HDD Low-Level Format application.
2. Download the tools.
3. After you download the HDD Low-Level Format tools, run it.
4. Then select the hard disk that you want to format, then click Continue.
5. Then you only need to follow the format guide that is shown on the software tool.
6. The process usually only takes a few minutes depending on the capacity and amount of data on your HDD.

Using the Mini Tool Partition Wizard

Mini Tool Partition Wizard is a hard disk partition management software or tool and is commonly used for HDD maintenance. This application has a concise and easy-to-understand interface, and the features it has are also quite capable.

This software is also widely used to format hard disks. Because in this software there is a zero-filling method which is quite popular for permanently deleting data on partitions.

Below are the steps to format the hard drive using the Mini Tool Partition Wizard:

1. First, make sure that you have the Mini Tool Partition Wizard software.
2. If you don’t have the software yet, please download it first.
3. Wait until the download process is complete, then install the Mini Tool Partition Wizard software.
4. When finished, open the application and then look for the hard drive that you want to format.
5. Then, right-click on the hard drive, then click on the Wipe Disk option.
6. After that, select Fill Sectors with Zero and click OK.
7. After a warning window appears, just select Yes.
8. Wait for the formatting process to finish, how long the formatting process is depends on the amount of data inside and the performance of the hard disk.

Final Words

So, those were some easy ways to cleanly format the hard disk in Windows 10 with easy-to-follow methods. Hopefully, this article is useful and can help those of you who are confused when you want to format the hard disk drive in Windows 10.