Formatting Your Hard Drive

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A hard disk drive is a non-volatile device mainly for data storage. Usually faster than any
other storage device, this essential part of your computer stores all main data and
program permanently used. For this specific reason, it is called the Data Center and it
also plays a very important role in overall system performance. Alike to any part of your
computer, the hard disk is not lifetime durable. It gets teared through time but also due
overexploitation and misuse. However there might be upcoming logical failures may be
from virus infection, spyware, files and data corruption with your computer hard disk that
compel you to format your hard disk.

In this chapter we will discuss on how to format your computer hard disk in view to
resolve hardware conflicts.

Important Note: This process will inevitably clean up all existing active files on your
computer. It is recommended that you save all files needed for future use. For formatting
and installation of Windows XP, please ensure that you have the discs for any
applications or third party hardware you use for same to be re-installed after this process.
You can save everything on a DVD, CD drive or even another hard drive that you will
not format in order not to lose them.

To Format a secondary Hard Drive , Right-click on “My Computer” icon on your
desktop. Or Go to Menu Start > Right click “My Computer” > select “Manage” > select
“Computer Management (Local)” > select “Storage” and double click on “Disk
Management”.



This process will display partitions of your hard drive on the right side of your window
basically differentiated in terms of size. If you choose to format only partition per drive,
you must select and delete the specific partition on the drive you are going to format. To
do this operation, you must right-click on the partition and select “Delete Partition”. Then
Select “Yes” in order to confirm deletion of partition.

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The box corresponding to the deleted partition will now display a black bar with a
message “Unallocated” relating to its size.
To format the partition, you should right click on above mentioned partition and select
“New partition” >“Primary partition” and click on “Next”



Step to follow is to make the size equivalent to maximium and confirmed by click on
“Next” (See below picture)




Below screen shots will appear. Your computer will automatically choose the first
available drive letter for the new drive. Moreover you can choose another drive from the
drop down menu. To confirm, click on Next.

In the New Partition Wizard, choose NTFS (New Technology File System) in the file
system as it is quick and reliable and leave the allocation unit size as default. In the
volume label field, enter the name you want for your drive. Nevertheless, choose a simple
name and avoid using spaces. You can opt for a quick format by checking box “Perform
a quick format” if the hard drive is a brand new one. Leave the box “Enable file and
folder compression” unchecked and click on “Next” followed by “Finish” on the next page displayed. (Refer to below image displayed)



The wizard will then format the hard disk which shall take a little while depending on the
volume and size of the drive. Do not close “Computer Management” until it finishes the
process. You will notice the size of the drive changed from “Formatting” to “Healthy” as
well as the name of the drive put on show when the procedure completed. You can access
to your refreshed/ newly formatted drive.

Formatting and installing your Hard drive using the installation CD

Another means of reformatting your hard disk is to use your Windows XP installation CD.
Here also, it is crucial to save all important information on another drive that won’t be
formatted as all information will be erased from this application.
First of all, insert the installation disc in the CD drive and follow the instructions
displayed as per below image:




The CD will load a blue screen and will load files needed. To set up windows, Press
Enter




The below displayed screen will appear. Here you can choose to delete useless partition
or even keep it for future back up. Use the Up and Down arrow keys to highlight your
“C:” partition and press the 'D' key for deletion. This is not applicable if there is no
partition.



If you choose to delete the partition, below screen will display, press “L” to confirm
deletion.



You should press “ESC” if you choose not to delete partition for your computer to return
to previous window. However if you delete partition, you will return automatically to
previous window. You can distinguish that this window no longer show the partition
deleted. Follow the instruction on below screen. If you choose to create a new partition,
press arrow key down to “To create a partition in the unpartitioned space, press C”
and press C as mentioned for validating your command.

When creating a new partition on the unpartitioned space, you choose maximum size
(Default size). Make sure you pick the maximum size and press Enter to install set up.



To install windows screen in new partition, select by highlighting and press Enter.
Below screen will appear, choose with arrow key New Technology File System (NTFS)
for it is reliable and faster. You can choose NTFS quick only if your hard drive is new.
Then press “Enter”. (Refer to below image)

Windows will start installation in your new hard disk. Please be advised that this process
might take more than half a while..