how to format my hard drive in windows 7

Its faster to just erase/invalidate the partition, create a new partition, and MAYBE verify sectors instead of doing a real format and then verifying. I prefer the 35 pass called Gutmann method. The only way to truly erase a disk is to have it do a 0 write pass. I would hope that this utility, DiskPart, issuing its 'clean' command actually does more than clear the data partition info. It's possible to recover the data with a little work, primarily on the 'folders.' If you have a later version, you will want to go to the Power User Menu. Format just basically wipes the file data/directory/folder content, not the data elsewhere on the drive. First, navigate to Open Disk Management, which is included in all versions of Windows.

While I cannot guarantee this article does exactly what it claims it does (I haven't tried it, let alone heard about this way before) I can speak for the way format works now days.ĭrives come pretty much preformatted now days as to its sectors and such. 21240634 said:Am I missing something? Couldn't you just bring up a command prompt and type 'format e:' - or some other drive letter?

How to format my hard drive in windows 7