When formatting your Windows harddisk, all the data on your chosen disk (HDD), floppydisk or other memorydisk will be deleted, without a possibility of retrieving it again. But formatting the disk (“FORMAT C:”) is a good option, when you want to have a clean new install on your pc or to delete all data completely.

Format a second drive without operating system

A Harddisk that don’t have an operating system but only stores data – like an external one – can be formatted just like floppy disks or other memorydisks directly under windows. To do this, select the chosen harddisk in windows explorer, “My Computer”, rightmouseclick and choose “format”.

Format a harddrive with installed Windows

The harddisk that contains an operating system cannot be formatted as easy as normal memorydisks. To do this, you need at older windows versions a Boot-disk, for actual systems the windows installation disk.

Guide: Format a Windows XP hard drive

With a classic Windows system like Windows 95 or Windows 98 you can choose for the option “startup with cd-rom”, when put in the installation cd or boot-disk. After loading the disk, the DOS prompt starts with “A:\” or “D:\”. The drive “A” shows the contents of your floppy bootdisk, “D” shows the contents of your boot-cd.

Now you will have to give in the command: FORMAT C:, which will beginn to format your harddisk, drive “C”. The Windows system is always installed on disk C:\.