Formatting Disks And Drives

You probably know that hard disks on your computer need to be formatted before you using them. Formatting is the way to configure the disk with a file system. Otherwise Windows will not be able to recognize the drive and store information on the disk. Existing hard disks on your computer are already formatted. But if you buy a new hard drive to expand the storage then you need to format it. For formatting the hard drive you can consult a PC repair company.

Most of the computer users have various questions regarding formatting hard drive. In this article we will discuss on that. A common question is how often one needs to format the hard drive. Well, you don't need to format hard drive often. Whenever you install a new hard disk on your PC then only format it with a file system, be it NTFS or FAT. Reformatting is also a very common term in this context. This means formatting the hard disk or partition that is already formatted.

In the past, reformatting a hard disk and reinstalling Windows was sometimes recommended as a method for fixing a serious computer problem. Reformatting would fix the problem at the expense of deleting everything on the computer. You would then have to reinstall your programs by using the original installation files or discs, and then restore all of your personal files, such as documents, music, and pictures, from backups that you had made beforehand.

You should create one or more partitions on the hard drive. Now you can format each partition. All the partitions of the hard drive are termed as volume. Each volume is assigned a drive letter. There are two types of file system - NTFS and FAT file systems. For Windows operating system the best choice is NTFS. However, some previous versions of Windows operating system required FAT32.

There are two types of formatting, Quick format and Full format. Quick format creates a new file table on the hard disk. In this case, data on the disk are not fully overwrite or erased. A quick format requires lesser time than a normal format.

There is no such stringent rule on how many partitions you can create on a hard drive. If there is unallocated space on the drive, you can create partitions or volumes. If there is not unallocated space and you want to create a new partition, then you need to create unallocated space. For this you can shrink a volume or use a third-party partitioning tool.

You can easily add a new hard drive to expand the storage on your computer. You can do it on your own or get tech support from an expert.

Online computer repair companies help the PC users to fix any and all types of PC issues. Computer services from these companies are very reasonably priced and available round the clock.