Q: How do you reformat a hard drive? Plus Reinstall Windows
A: Be certain you have the following information before you begin a reformat:
Windows settings
Internet settings
Working boot disk
Software serial numbers
Drivers for all Hardware
Back up of Internet Bookmarks
Back up all Files you created
To give a little history, every hard drive undergoes a low-level format, a partition, and a high-level format. These steps prepare your hard drive for reading and writing.
1.The factory does the low-level formatting, so don't worry about it. This procedure should be done only at the factory anyway.
2.Partitioning divides the drive into sections
devoted to certain tasks. This improves disk efficiency by keeping separate
your operating system, programs, and data. The operating system locates files
and organizes them into little chunks called clusters. It's called the FAT, or
file address table, system. The larger the disk space, the larger the clusters.
Partitioning can be useful because it keeps the OS from wasting space with
large clusters on a large disk.We only recommend this for 8 GB Hard Drives and
larger like 2GB for C: and 6 GB for rest D:.
3.Finally you format the drive. The operating system erases the address tables on the disk, tests the disk to make sure all sectors are reliable, marks the bad sectors with virtual Do Not Enter signs, and creates a table to help locate information later.
Reformatting a disk does not erase your data. Instead, it erases the table that points to where the data is stored. If you accidentally reformat your drive, don't panic -- you can most likely recover the information on your disk. Don't recover information unless you have to, though. It can be a tricky procedure.
To format a drive, other then your C drive do the following:
1.Open My Computer.
2.Right-click on the drive you want to format.
3.Select Format.
You will see several different parameters that you can change. For example, if you are formatting a floppy drive, choose a density of High . You can also choose to verify the disk to make sure the formatting was done correctly.
To format your C drive and reinstall your operating system do the following.