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.

Emily Long is a freelance writer based in Salt Lake City. After graduating from Duke University, she spent several years reporting on the federal workforce for Government Executive, a publication of ...

Whether you're looking to reinstall Windows, retire one of your company's computers, or just prepare a second hard drive for reuse, it's a good idea to wipe the drive first by formatting it. You can ...

Before we begin, it’s important to know that formatting a drive will erase everything on it, so you’ll want to make sure that you back up or save anything that you don’t want to lose. After you’ve ...

You may need to format a hard drive to match your computer's operating system before you can use it. To format a hard drive in Windows, you'll use the Disk Management utility; on a Mac, you'll use ...

“Format” as a word in computers is very popular, and a well-known word among computer users. We all have done that, especially with USB drives. That said, what people are sometimes afraid of is when ...

Most external hard drives come formatted with the FAT file system, which makes the drive compatible with multiple operating systems. As such, the drive is immediately usable out of the box. If you ...