How To Format External Hard Drive

Now that you have an external hard drive, you should know how to format it for optimal use with your personal computer. After you have bought and connected an external hard drive to your personal computer, you will want to format it in order for it to perform at its best with your PC. Formatting an external hard drive sounds complicated, but in reality it isn't very difficult and won't take you very long to accomplish. Within a few minutes, you should be ready to store files and programs  on your new external hard drive.

What you will need in order to format the external hard drive:

• An external hard drive that has been turned on, connected, and installed on your personal computer

Once you have connected and installed your external hard drive to your personal computer, the next step is to format it for optimal performance. If your external hard drive came with software meant to perform this task, use the manufacturer's software and follow the on-screen instructions. If your hard drive doesn't have software for formatting, it's easy to accomplish on your PC without any special software.

1. If you are using Windows, go to the lower left hand corner and click on the "start" button, go to "my computer" and right click and select "manage" from the drop down menu. When the new window appears, on the left hand side, select "disk management". You will see a list of the hard drives connected to your computer. Select the letter of your external hard drive. It may be E:\ or F:\, but you need to confirm this. Do not format your external hard drive if you have files and programs on it that you will lose. Formatting the hard drive will get rid of any files or programs currently stored on the external hard drive. Once you have highlighted the letter of your external hard drive, right click it and select "format" from the drop down menu. When the format option box appears, type in a name for your external hard drive and then click "OK".  You will see NTFS in the file system format box and you will leave that selected. You will see a warning box that will inform you that formatting the drive will erase all data on the drive. Unless you have accidentally realized that there is data on the disk that you do not want to lose, click "OK" Your computer will format your external hard drive and within a few minutes, you will be ready to start saving files and programs to the new hard drive.

Your new external hard drive will perform at its best if you have formatted it to work optimally with your PC. Formatting your new external hard drive will only take a few minutes and is best done when you first begin using the new hard drive. Good luck and enjoy the extra storage space you now have available with your new external hard drive.