How to Reformat an External Hard Drive – Guide

Do you store backups of your hard drive on an external hard drive? I hope you do. It’s a smart way to protect your data. But what if that drive gets corrupted and you need to reformat it to make it accessible again? Can you reformat it without losing all your data? It’s certainly possible, but can you do it? The short answer is yes. You can reformat the drive and keep your files by formatting your drive and then using a data recovery tool to recover your information. Reformatting a drive in Windows is a fairly straightforward process. However, you should make sure to complete a quick format. A quick format just erases the organizational structure of the files on the drive without removing the actual files. Imagine throwing out a bunch of folders but not their contents.

When you format a hard drive, you may lose important files that are stored on the drive. If you have important files on your hard drive that are not backed up or if they have been lost or damaged, formatting the hard drive can help free up space and remove viruses and malware.

How to Reformat an external hard drive

How to Reformat a drive in Windows

To reformat an external hard drive in Windows, you will need to first create a new partition on the drive. Then, you will need to format the partition using the Windows Format command. Finally, you will need to copy the files and folders from the old hard drive to the new hard drive.

Once Windows has recognized the connected drive, open the “Computer” window and click on the “My Computer” button. In the “Computer Name” field, type in your external hard drive’s name and click on the “Change Name” button. In the “Description” field, type in a brief description of your external hard drive. Click on the “Save Changes” button to make your changes and then click on the “Close Computer” button to finish.

In File Explorer, open the shortcut to This PC in the left column and click on it.

Format the external hard drive to FAT32.

Quick Formatting Your Paper When you want to quickly format your paper, make sure the Quick Format box is checked. This will make your paper look more organized and easy to read.

Finally, click on the format button and wait for the process to complete.

Quick Format is important because if you don’t check it, your drive will be formatted in a way that will make it difficult to recover your data.

How to Reformat a drive on Mac

To quickly format a document on macOS, you can adjust a specific setting. ..

In the Finder, select the App Store and then click on the Get Started button.

To erase a disk:

  1. Open Disk Utility.
  2. Select the disk you want to erase from the list on the left.
  3. Click Erase on the toolbar.
  4. Enter a name for the disk in the Name field and click OK.
  5. Click Erase on the toolbar again to confirm that you want to erase the disk and click OK. ..

If you have an external hard drive listed under External on the left side of the Disk Utility app, you can click on it to see its contents.

Now click on the Delete button on the top of the window. The operating system will prompt you to clean the drive. ..

Please click on the Security Options link to continue.

Final note

This guide is for people who want to reformat an external hard drive. If you have any questions about this article, you may ask us. Also, please share your love by sharing this article with your friends.