How to Erase & Reformat a Hard Drive on a Laptop

When your laptop slows down, a serious virus infects it or it becomes clogged, it may be useful to reformat your laptop hard drive. Reformatting your hard drive erases all data, including the operating system, so that you can freshly reinstall the operating system. Windows will format the hard drive as part of its installation process, whereas it once formatted separately. Note that these instructions refer to Windows 7.

Things You'll Need

• Windows 7 disk

Instructions

1. Insert the Windows 7 disk into your laptop optical drive and restart your computer.

2. Press a key on your keyboard when prompted to "Press any key..."

3. Select your language, and fill in personal preferences and details. Click "Next" and "I accept the license terms," and "Next" again.

4. Click "Custom" at the next screen, and click "Drive Options (advanced)." This takes you to the page to reformat your hard drive.

5. Select your laptop hard drive, click "Format," and enter any other options you might want, such as set up a partition. Click "Next" when you have finished reformatting your hard drive. Windows 7 will now continue to install, so that you have a completely reinstalled operating system.

Tips & Warnings

• Erasing and reformatting a hard drive removed all data from the drive. Create backups of all personal files and programs before erasing and reformatting the hard drive on your laptop.

References

• Microsoft Windows: Installing and Reinstalling Windows 7