How to Format An External Hard Drive

It is possible to format an external hard drive using a Windows utility called Windows Disk Management. This tutorial article shows you the steps to format the external hard drive using just that utility.

1. Connect

The first thing you have to do to format an external hard drive is to obviously connect the hard drive. Depending on what kind of hard drive it is and what you are using to connect it to your computer, there is a number of ways to do this. I would suggest reading the manual that should have came with your external hard drive. I will assume that since you are reading about how to format the external hard drive that you already know how to connect it.

2. Check for existing image

If that hard drive currently holds an image, then make sure you don't need any data that is on it. Formatting a hard drive will "permanently" delete the files/folders, programs, and all data on that hard drive. You would check for an existing image by trying to boot from the hard drive.

3a. method 1

If you have access to the icon for the external hard drive that you want to format (in the "My Computer", start menu, desktop icon, etc), then right click it. A context menu should open and one of the choices is "Format...". Select that choice to format the external hard drive. This will open up a window that asks for the capacity, file system, allocation unit size, volume label, and other format options. You can probably leave the options as they are by default unless you have something in mind for the formatting of the external hard drive. After you have made the choices, click the "Start" button to begin the format of the external hard drive.

3b. method 2

If you cannot find any way to access the hard drive options from above, try the following. Right-click My Computer, click on Manage. This should bring up a window called "Computer Management". In this window, on the left pane, click on "Disk Management" (located under "Storage"). On the right pane, it should show all the hard drives currently connected. If the external hard drive you want to format is not on the list, then it is not connected properly. Right-click on the hard drive and click "Format..." and do follow the steps from above to format your external hard drive.