What program for formatting a hard disk exists? System utilities

First of all, you need to understand what formatting is. This is the process by which you clean up your drive from the information on it. It is used most often in those cases when you need to quickly release the disk from the contents and write to it other data. Or before installing the operating system. How can you perform such an operation? To do this, there is a program for formatting the hard disk. Before you use it, take care of the security of the necessary files and documents, copy them, for example, to an external drive.

Formatting using the control panel

The very first way to perform drive cleaning is to use your own computer capabilities. To use them, you need to apply the control panel to your device. In this section, select "Disk Management" and see all the available options: assign labels and names, create partitions, produce the formatting we need so much and so on.

Find the drive or partition we need, move the mouse over it, right-click and select "formatting". This option is convenient because we initially see all the disks connected to the computer, even those that are inactive and we will not see them in the explorer window. Before starting the procedure, you can make some settings in the window that appears. You can change the volume label, that is, the name of the selected drive, select the cluster size and file system type. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that these parameters have already been pre-configured and exposed, so they can not be touched, except when there is an exact goal of the changes.

Next, the program for formatting the hard disk offers a choice of full formatting or fast, which differ significantly from each other. If the first option removes the data as efficiently as possible, without the possibility of recovery, then the second disk will be recognized as empty, but if desired, the information from it can be restored. It is recommended to use it with confidence in the full capacity of the media.

Using the Explorer Window

The method described above is not the only solution to the task set before us. It is possible to reformat the disk even more quickly. To do this, it is enough to open up "My Computer" to get to all active logical disks. Then select the one we need, right-click on the menu and click on "Formatting".

Before us, another program to format the hard drive. Using the opened window with additional settings, you can adjust various parameters of the operation. At the same time, remember that the real capacity of the disk is less than the data provided to us from the manufacturer. For example, a 2 TB disk will actually have an available space of 1.81 TB.

How do I format the system disk?

If there is an operating system on the disk, then, of course, it can not overwrite itself, so you have to use other methods. Why do this? This procedure is performed if a new one is installed on the system disk with the operating OS. To do this, insert the installation disk with the operating system into the computer / laptop. It will start and prompt you to start the installation. You will only need to follow the instructions for doing this operation.

First of its two kinds, we select the installation from scratch, the system update option is ignored. On the used hard disk, you can create and delete logical partitions, perform accelerated formatting. Then we continue to install the OS either by deleting the disk, we continue to work on the computer.

We considered Windows 7 version. In the operating systems Windows Vista and Windows XP all the actions are similar. But if you are servicing the system disk, it is preferable to use third-party boot disks, which are called Live CDs.

Free hard disk formatting program

To format any data storage devices, including hard disks connected to the device, you can use the HDD Low Level Format Tool. System utilities are, of course, a good thing, but it is better to clean the quality with third-party software. The above utility is small, convenient, supports work with different interfaces, for example, with SATA, IDE, USB, Fir, SCSI. You can service the devices of the following manufacturers: Seagate, Maxtor, Fujitsu, Samsung, Quantum, Toshiba, IBM. Also works with flash cards.

What else is good about this program? Low-level formatting of the hard disk is its main merit. It destroys absolutely all the data that is written on the media, without skipping the boot sectors with divided logical partitions. Remember that it will not be possible to recover deleted information.

How does the HDD Low Level Format Tool work?

Download the distribution, start and install. This is done so simply that we will not dwell on this in detail. After we read the license agreement and choose: we use the free version or pay three dollars thirty cents and get an updated and faster program. We choose the first option. The only drawback of this utility is that each time you start, you will see and delete the window with the offer to pay this money.

The interface is very simple. Immediately, you will see which storage devices are connected to the computer and are ready to work. There are various data about these devices, different background information.

Let's do the testing. We will not experiment with the hard drive, we use for this purpose an ordinary USB flash drive having a capacity of 4 GB. Select it from the list and click the button "Continue >>>". We will see the characteristics of the flash drive and the start / stop buttons for formatting. Before the start of the process, the program will specify if you want to start it. In the window you can observe the progress of the operation.

The peculiarity of the free version is low speed (4.3 Mb / sec), so everything will last about 10 minutes. HDD Low Level Format Tool will not only format your drive, but it can also be "repaired" if the computer does not see the USB flash drive.

How else can I format a hard drive?

One of the most powerful and functional utilities for this is Acronis. This program for formatting the hard disk is updated regularly and keeps pace with the times. It is paid, but it also has a free trial version. So if the utility you like, you can buy a full version. The system requirements are not too large, so almost every computer can be installed.

There are a lot of options for cleaning the disk , the choice is yours.