What is disk formatting?
Disk formatting is the process of preparing a data storage device such as a hard disk drive, solid-state drive, floppy disk or USB flash drive for initial use. In some cases, the formatting operation may also create one or more new file systems.
1. Windows built-in formatting tool
a.Windows Disk Management
Disk Management is a small utility for Windows that manages all of the system disks and partition. You can easily view the disk size through Disk Management utility.isk Management utilizes the built-in Windows format tool to format hard drives.
Features of Disk Management
- Simpler partition creation: When you right-click a volume, you can choose whether to create a basic, spanned, or striped partition directly from the menu.
- Disk conversion options: When you add more than four partitions to a basic disk, you are prompted to convert the disk to dynamic or to the GUID partition table (GPT) partition style.
- Extend and shrink partitions: You can extend and shrink partitions directly from the Windows interface.
b. Windows command-line tool diskpart
To format a hard drive using command-line, follow the instructions below:
- Open command prompt as administrator
- Type the command diskpart
- List disk command will list all the hard drives connected to the computer. Check the number assigned to the disk you want to format.
- Then issue the following command:
Select disk 0
Where 0 is the number of drive to be formatted. - Run the clean command to delete everything on the selected disk.
- Run the following command to create a new partition
create partition primary - Run the following command to format the newly created partition
format fs=ntfs
Where fs=ntfs defines the file system to be created after formatting.
3.USB Disk Storage Format Tool
USB Disk Storage format tool is a freeware tool to quickly format your USB with any file-system. It supports FAT, FAT32, exFAT, or NTFS partition types.
Features of USB Disk Storage Format Tool
- Quick format and safe format.
- Erase all data and delete the space on flash drives that cannot be removed in the traditional way.
- Remove any tracks of malicious software that may have infected it.
- Correct partition errors if any.
- Create a volume label for USB disk drives.
- Scan drive for errors before formatting.
- Create a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB.
- Tested with thousands of flash drives
4. HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
HP USB Disk Storage Format tool is designed to format your USB drives effectively and efficiently. This tool is completely free to use for all users.
Features of HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
- It is a freeware utility for Windows OS.
- Its interface is very simple and easy to use.
- This tool takes less time to format your large USB drives.
- It is best for USB formatting and can strip and re-format your drives.
5. EaseUs Partition Master
The EaseUs Partition Master is the best free disk partition software to make full use of hard drive capacity. And can help you to carry out your formatting process of any external or internal drives easily.
Features of EaseUs Partition Master
- It resizes or moves partitions of different sizes and reallocate disk space in a reasonable way.
- Merge partitions into a larger partition with much more disk space to solve low disk space problem.
- Allow users to check partition property and ensures whether there are disk errors on selected partitions.
- Format HDD, SSD, USB, memory card, SD card or delete partitions cautiously to make your disks or partitions accessible and available for disk repair.
- Clear away useless or sensitive data on selected partitions thoroughly to keep your privacy protected.
- Create or change the label of a selected partition or drive letter for better reference. It’s much easy to identify all marked or target partitions & disks fast.
