How to Format an External Hard Drive

Has your external hard drive filled up with a lot of useless information and you would like to clean it up quickly? To do so you need to format it. There are several different types of external hard drives, but the most popular type is the USB hard drive. You could have a standard-type USB hard drive or you could have a solid-state USB hard drive. The process for formatting an external hard drive is the same no matter what type of drive you have.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

External Hard Drive Format Process

1. Double-click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop or click the "Start" button and click "My Computer."

2. 
    

   Locate the external hard drive you would like to format and right-click on it.. You will notice a menu pop up. Move your mouse over the "Format" item and left-click it.

3. 
    

   Another box will appear. Accept the defaults, or you may check the box "Quick Format." The Quick Format option is much faster, so if you are in a hurry, you may want to select this option. However, the data are erased more thoroughly if you do not select Quick Format. Make your selection, then click "Start."

4. 
    

   You will notice a dialog box warning you that if you continue all data will be erased. Click "OK".

5. 
    

   Then you will see a progress bar showing you how the format process is going. If you have a large hard drive it could take some time to complete the format.

6. 
    

   When it is finished, you will get a box informing you the format is complete. Click "OK" then click "close." The drive is clean and ready for new data.

Tips & Warnings

• You can also use the format function to format floppies, USB thumb drives and almost any other external data storage device.
• Be very careful with the format tool, because formatting erases data, and if you accidentally use it on your main hard drive, you will render your computer totally inoperable. Make sure you have copied all of the data you want to keep to another location before formatting. Additionally, while formatting appears to completely erase all data, technically it does not. If you are donating, selling or disposing of your external hard drive and you have sensitive data on your drive such as financial records, tax records or other private information, you should know that this data can be recovered by someone using commonly available tools. If you need to completely erase all traces of data, there are programs that use Department of Defense-approved erasing procedures for eliminating top-secret government information from hard drives (see the resources section for a free utility).

Resources

• Department of Defense-Approved Erasing Method