how to format my hard drive on my laptop

Most users do this by opening the Start Menu and searching for 'Disk Management', which brings up a Control Panel option titled Create and format hard disk partitions.

The hard part is finding the confidence to follow the instructions and do it yourself - and even that's not very difficult. Windows 10 makes it very easy to format drives, so it's not the process that's difficult. Given a particular file, the format determines how exactly individual bits should be stored on the drive. And then, click on the Erase tab across the top. 5 below: Wipe the Drive Clean With Data Destruction Software. Step 2: Locate the drive name from the left-hand side of Disk Utility and click on it. If you want to completely erase the information on the C drive, see No. Press F12 during boot/restart and you get the boot menu. To use Disk Management to format a USB drive on Windows 10, use these steps: Open Start. Formatting does not permanently erase the data on the drive. Put the MS Windows CD in your drive and restart your computer. Formatting HDDs and SSDs in Windowsįormatting a data drive means wiping it clean and resetting the drive's internal file system to use a particular format: FAT32, NTFS, EXT4, etc. Skip this article entirely and instead learn how to do a clean install of Windows. Keep reading for step-by-step instructions on how to do this. Then open File Explorer and check if you can access the drive. Whatever the case, you should always format a brand new data drive because you never know what a previous owner has hidden on it - not just bloatware, but malware, viruses, keyloggers, and other scary things. Connect your drive to a different USB port of your PC.

How to format my hard drive on my laptop