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How to format a hard drive
Your PC is running too slow these days? Giving to many errors? Can’t work? No more free space? Just bought a new Hard Drive? It’s more than time to reinstall your operative system? What you need is a format.
Format it’s the process witch will liberate all the space in a partition, hard drive, floppy, CD-ROM OR DVD, readying it to receive information.
Technically the format creates the file system, allocating or setting the FAT tables or the necessary structures so the hard drive can work. I must warn that all the information will be delete and without professional help the process won’t allow a data recovery after it (some times even with professional help it isn’t possible).
Before starting the format you should backup all you data and check that you have all that is necessary to reinstall your operative system.
On this tutorial we will use a Windows 98 second edition start up floppy, but you can use any other. It’s mandatory that the format and fdisk commands or similar are on the floppy, and logically all the files necessary for the boot. In case you are about to install one Operative System that hasn’t got a automatic installation program truth CD, I mean, a Operative System that needs drivers for the CD or DVD reader it’s better that the floppy also has the program necessary to do this. It’s possible to reinstall and format you operative system without the help of a floppy, if the installation CD allows that, for example Microsoft XP or any Linux distribution (has far has I know at least), but in this tutorial we will use the boot floppy.
If you have all the backups done and you can now delete all your Hard Drive information safely, reboot your PC placing the floppy on the drive so that the PC will boot on it. If your PC won’t boot by it, check if the floppy has all the files necessary and that your BIOS has the correct boot up sequence (if you need help setting the BIOS leave a comment to this tutorial).
If all went well, you can see the prompt ( A:\> ). On it, even before we start the format you must know that: if a Operative System writes information on the masters boot record, for example XP, you should delete that information. Type fdisk /mbr. Type fdisk if you want to partition your hard drive. To format just type:
format c:
The “C:” indicates the partition or unit that you will format, I mean, if it’s a floppy you can type format a: if it’s another partition format d: By typing format c: you will receive a warning telling you that all the data will be lost. If you press N you will cancel all the process.
The time it takes to format varies depending on the partition size, so relax a bit. The format command used in this tutorial it’s a old MS-DOS command. If you write at he prompt ( A:\> ) format /? You will get addition information about the use of that command, for example: format a: /q /u will do a fast format that won’t allow data recovery.
If you need help or have any doubt please leave your comment.
by André Ferreira in 2005-03-13
Translated by André Ferreira