How do I format a hard drive? A computer hard drive stores your files, allowing you to access them at any time. The majority of the time, you want these files to remain stored properly and safely.

Formatting your hard drive is an important step in setting up your computer. It clears all the data off the disk so that you can start fresh. DiskPart is a powerful command-line tool that allows you ...

Partitioning your hard drive sounds like a technically involved task that most people don’t need to bother with—but it’s actually relatively simple to do, doesn’t have to cost you any money, and can ...

Ubuntu can format hard drive partitions with the FAT16 file system, used by older operating systems such as Microsoft DOS and Windows 95. Some older devices may also require a hard drive partition ...

Editor’s note (1/12/10): For more-current advice, see “How (and Why) to Partition Your Hard Drive.” No matter the capacity of your PC’s hard drive, chances are that it’s set up to function as one ...

Most PCs come from the factory with a single partition on their hard drive, meaning that it shows up as one drive in the Computer window (as C:, typically). But keeping your data, applications, and ...

Western Digital WD VelociRaptor internal hard drive. Solid-state drives are all the rage lately, thanks to their high transfer speeds and ultrafast access times, but most people still use cheap, ...

Unlike internal hard drives, most external hard drives come already partitioned and formatted. However, if you need multiple partitions for your business data, you may need to remove or shrink the ...

In addition, manufacturers sell drives based on how many GB can fit onto the platters, and not the amount that will be available to you after you have formatted it, because this amount may vary ...

Apple made it easier to resize partitions–logical divisions of a storage device into separate mountable volumes with different properties–several releases of macOS ago. A Macworld reader resized their ...