Formatting Hard Drive

[ravemast]

Could someone explain this process to me? How does it work and what's the point of formatting your hard drive? I'm about to backup files on my computer to an external hard drive and I was told I might have to "format" my hard drive.

[The Altruist]

You will be formatting your EXTERNAL harddrive.
Formatting sets up the hard drive to hold data for whatever operating system you're using. It's like buying a new warehouse to hold merchandise, but first you have to put in the shelves.
Your external drive should have come with a CD or something to set it up.
Otherwise, assuming you're using Windows XP or higher, once you connect it, the computer should notice right away that the hard drive is unformatted (and therefore unusable at the moment), and will prompt you to format it. Do so.

EDIT: A second read through of your post makes me wonder. Are you formatting your internal hard drive? i.e. Did you get a virus from torrenting movies / viewing porn / pirating music / surfing Russian or Chinese crack sites / using Internet Explorer?

[The Last Rydian]

Formatting erases EVERYTHING off the drive. If it's the drive windows is installed to, formatting will erase windows and you will not be able to use it until you install windows.

[ravemast]

Thanks for the simple explanation Altruist. No, I'm not formatting my internal hard drive, I'm just doing my external. The external drive I bought did not come with a CD or anything. It simply came with the USB cable, AC adapter, and the external hard drive. The instructions were really brief, it just showed 3 pictures with 3 steps on it without any words. I bought a Western Digital My Book 1TB external Hard Drive. I opened the External Hard Drive icon in "My Computer" and noticed all these folders in there, but I just ignored them and transfered about 22GB worth of files. Before I did this transfer though, I noticed there was a "setup.exe." folder in the External Hard Drive icon, so I clicked it and it asked me for the User Agreement, but I noticed the "accept" and "decline" buttons were blank. I tried several times, clicking both of the buttons, and nothing happened. So I just started the transfer. But that information was another family member's information. Now I'm about to do my actual computer and I was told to "format" first.

[ravemast]

Bump

[iWarez]

I will be happy to help.

If I am correct, you want to wipe everything on your EXTERNAL hard-drive?

[ravemast]

Timmah152

I will be happy to help.

If I am correct, you want to wipe everything on your EXTERNAL hard-drive?

No, I only transferred about 22GB worth of stuff on it, but I was told to format the External HDD to a certain format for Windows. I was just wondering how I change the format. I know I can check it under "properties" when I click the external HDD.


Sorry, I'm not that good with HDD and formatting as you can see xD

[Bolweevil]

Formatting does what was previously mentioned.

The process of formatting will delete all of the contents, as previously mentioned.

So it's something you will want to do before moving files onto the thing you intend to format.

Some drives come pre-formatted so that the OS can recognize them, so if you were able to transfer files to the external drive from Windows, the external drive does not need formatted in order for it to be read by Windows, obviously.

[iWarez]

ravemast

Timmah152

I will be happy to help.

If I am correct, you want to wipe everything on your EXTERNAL hard-drive?

No, I only transferred about 22GB worth of stuff on it, but I was told to format the External HDD to a certain format for Windows. I was just wondering how I change the format. I know I can check it under "properties" when I click the external HDD.


Sorry, I'm not that good with HDD and formatting as you can see xD

Formatting = delete everything on the disk

I'm sure you wish to stay away from it. But, to delete all the stuff that came on it, that you would have to do manually.

[nightfly19]

Whoever told you to do this was probably recommending you convert the FAT32 file system that comes on most external hard-drives to NTFS.

http://www.ntfs.com/quest3.htm

[ravemast]

nightfly19

Whoever told you to do this was probably recommending you convert the FAT32 file system that comes on most external hard-drives to NTFS.

http://www.ntfs.com/quest3.htm

Yeah, that's what I meant xD I'll mention "Fat" and "NTFS" next time I have questions about this stuff lol. What's the difference between the two anyway?

Oh, and when I type in C:> CONVERT C: /fs:ntfs
does that just affect the external HDD or does it change my computer's?

[The Last Rydian]

Change the "C" you type to the drive letter of the external and it'll change the external only.

You can also right-click the drive in "my computer" and format it that way.

[ravemast]

Okay, I just typed it and now it's asking for the "current volume level". So is this the total size? Or the current free space available?

[The Last Rydian]

Use the right-click menu option like I said.

[ravemast]

The Last Rydian

Use the right-click menu option like I said.

Yeah.. I tried that, but then it said it would delete all data stored on there. I already have 21GB of stuff on there and I don't want to wait another couple of hours getting that data back on there again.