Reformat Portable Hard Drive Windows 10
For instructions on how to format your hard drive on a Mac, please reference the following links: How to format a drive in Mac OS 10.6 to 10.10 How to format your drive in MacOS 10.11 and above Formatting your drive in Windows To open the Disk Management press and hold the Windows key + ( R ) Type compmgmt.msc. This page shows you how to reformat or format the PS4 hard drive for Windows 10/8/7 PC step by step. 'I replaced the PS4 hard drive with an SSD on my laptop and I planned to reformat and use the old PS4 hard drive on my Windows 10 PC.
You need to format a hard drive if you plan on using it in Windows.
To format a hard drive means to erase any information on the drive and to set up a file system so your operating system can read data from, and write data to, the drive.
As complicated as that might sound, it's not really difficult to format a hard drive in any version of Windows. All operating systems offer this capability and Windows makes it easy.
If the hard drive you want to format has never been used or was just wiped clean, it must first be partitioned. See How to Partition a Hard Drive in Windows for instructions. Once partitioned, return to this page for help formatting the drive.
Time Required: The time it takes to format a hard drive in Windows depends almost entirely on the drive's size, but your computer's overall speed plays a part, too.
How to Format a Hard Drive in Windows
Follow these easy steps to format a hard drive in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP:
Open Disk Management, the hard drive manager included with all versions of Windows.
Opening Disk Management can be done a number of ways depending on your version of Windows, but the easiest method is to type diskmgmt.msc in the Run dialog box or the Start menu.
Another way to open Disk Management is through Control Panel.
After Disk Management opens, which might take several seconds, look for the drive you want to format from the list at the top. There's a lot of information in Disk Management, so if you can't see everything, maximize the window.
Look for the amount of storage on the drive as well as the drive name. For example, if it says Music for the drive name and it has 2 GB of hard drive space, then you've likely selected a small flash drive full of music.
Feel free to open the drive to make sure it's what you want to format, if that would make you confident that you're going to format the right device.
If you don't see the drive listed on the top or an Initialize Disk windows appears, it probably means that the hard drive is new and has not yet been partitioned. Partitioning is something that must be done before a hard drive is formatted. See How to Partition a Hard Drive for instructions and then come back to this step to continue the formatting process.
Now that you've found the drive you want to format, right-click it and choose Format to open the disk-formatting wizard.
Now is as good a time as any to remind you that you really, really, really need to make sure that this is the right drive. You certainly don't want to format the wrong hard drive.
- Existing Drive: If you're formatting a drive that you've been using and that has data on it, double-check in Explorer that the drive letter you're choosing here in Disk Management is the same as the one you see in Explorer that has the information on it that you want to erase. Once formatted, the existing data on the disk are probably unrecoverable for most people.
- New Drive: If you're formatting a new drive, a great way to tell that it's the right one is to look at the File System column in the top part of Disk Management. Your existing drives will show file systems of NTFS or FAT32 but a new, unformatted drive will show RAW instead.
You cannot format your C drive, or whatever drive Windows is installed on, from within Windows. In fact, the Format option isn't even enabled for the drive with Windows on it. See How to Format C for instructions on formatting the C drive. All rihanna songs on youtube.
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The first of several formatting details which we'll cover over the next several steps is the volume label, which is essentially a name given to the hard drive.
In the Volume label textbox, enter whatever name you'd like to give to the drive.
If the drive had a previous name and that makes sense for you, by all means keep it.
Drive letters are assigned during the Windows partitioning process but can easily be changed after the format is complete. See How to Change Drive Letters after the format process is done if you'd like to do that.
Next up is the file system choice. In the File system textbox, choose NTFS.
NTFS is the most recent file system available and is almost always the best choice. Only choose FAT32 (FAT — which is actually FAT16 — isn't available unless the drive is 2 GB or smaller) if you are specifically told to do so by a program's instructions that you're planning on using on the drive. This is not common.
In the Allocation unit size textbox, choose Default. The best allocation size based on the size of the hard drive will be chosen.
It's not at all common to set a custom allocation unit size when formatting a hard drive in Windows.
Next is the Perform a quick format checkbox. Windows will check this box by default, suggesting that you do a 'quick format' but we recommend that you uncheck this box so that a 'standard format' is performed.
In a standard format, each individual 'part' of the hard drive, called a sector, is checked for errors and overwritten with a zero — a sometimes painfully slow process. This procedure ensures that the hard drive is physically working as expected, that each sector is a reliable place to store data, and that existing data is unrecoverable.
In a quick format, this bad sector search and basic data sanitization is skipped entirely and Windows assumes that the hard drive is free of errors. A quick format is very fast.
You, of course, can do whatever you like — either method will get the drive formatted. However, especially for older and brand new drives, we'd prefer to take our time and do the error checking right now instead of letting our important data do the testing for us later on. The data sanitization aspect of a full format is nice, too, if you're planning on selling or disposing of this drive.
The final format option is the Enable file and folder compression setting that is unchecked by default, which we recommend sticking with.
The file and folder compression feature allows you to choose files or folders to be compressed and decompressed on the fly, potentially offering considerable savings on hard drive space. The downside here is that performance can be equally affected, making your day-to-day Windows use much slower than it would be without compression enabled.
File and folder compression has little use in today's world of very large and very inexpensive hard drives. In all but the rarest occasions, a modern computer with a large hard drive is better off protecting all the processing power it can and skipping on the hard drive space savings.
Review the settings you've made in the last several steps and then click OK.
- Volume label: [label of your choosing]
- File system: NTFS
- Allocation unit size: Default
- Perform a quick format: unchecked
- Enable file and folder compression: unchecked
Look back at whatever previous steps you need to if you're wondering why these are the best options.
Windows is usually pretty good about warning you before you might do something damaging, and a hard drive format is no exception.
Click OK to the warning message about formatting the drive.
Just as the warning says, all the information on this drive will be erased if you click OK. You can't cancel the format process halfway through and expect to have half of your data back. As soon as this starts, there's no going back. There's no reason for this to be scary but we do want you to understand the finality of a format.
You can check the progress by watching the Formatting: xx% indicator under the Status column in the top part of Disk Management or in the graphical representation of your hard drive in the bottom section.
If you chose a quick format, your hard drive should only take several seconds to format. If you chose the standard format, which we suggested, the time it takes the drive to format will depend almost completely on the size of the drive. A small drive will take a small amount of time to format and a very large drive will take a very long time to format.
Your hard drive's speed, as well as your overall computer's speed, play some part but the size is the biggest variable.
In the next step, we'll look at whether the format completed as planned.
Disk Management in Windows won't flash a big 'Your Format is Complete!' message, so after the format percentage indicator reaches 100%, wait a few seconds and then check again under Status and make sure it's listed as Healthy like your other drives.
You may notice that now that the format is complete, the volume label has changed to what you set it as (New Drive in our case) and the % Free is listed at 100%. There's a little overhead involved so don't worry if your drive isn't completely empty.
That's it! Your hard drive has been formatted and it's ready for use in Windows. You can use the new drive however you want — back up files, store music, and videos, etc.
If you'd like to change the drive letter assigned to this drive, now is the best time to do that. See How to Change a Drive Letter for help.
Formatting Deletes Data — but Doesn't Always Erase It
When you format a drive in Windows, data may or may not truly be erased. Depending on your version of Windows, and the type of format, it's possible the data is still there, hidden from Windows and other operating systems but still accessible in certain situations.
See How to Wipe a Hard Drive for instructions on truly removing all the information on a hard drive and Wipe vs Shred vs Delete vs Erase: What's the Difference? for some helpful clarification.
If the hard drive you're reformatting won't ever need to be used again, you can skip the format and the wipe, and physically or magnetically destroy it instead. See How to Completely Erase a Hard Drive for more on these other methods.
More on Formatting Hard Drives in Windows
If you want to format your hard drive so you can install Windows again from scratch, your hard drive will be automatically formatted as part of that process. See How to Clean Install Windows for more on that.
Not happy with the drive letter that Windows assigned during the partitioning process? You're welcome to change it at any time! See How to Change Drive Letters in Windows to learn how.
You can also format a hard drive via Command Prompt using the format command. See Format Command: Examples, Switches, & More for details on how to do that.
The hard drive is one of the major storage components of a computer system. It stores various kinds of data like text, pictures, audios, videos, etc. Any problem arising in such hard drives could lead to inaccessibility of the data present in it. Such inaccessibility is often supported by various error messages. One of the most common error messages that make the hard drives inaccessible is “Hard Drive is not accessible. Access is denied“.
What is this “Access is Denied” error?
The error message indicates that there is some problem with the hard drive, which has made the hard drive inaccessible. In the worst case, it could also lead to data loss.
Why do we face it?
Reformat Portable Hard Drive Windows 10 Free
The issues mentioned above can be experienced in many different situations as well as different versions of operating systems. The error message indicates that the hard drive has gone corrupt.
To get over from the situation, you can follow any of the two solutions mentioned below:
- Automatic Method
- and, Manual Method.
1. How to Automatically Fix this Error?
To solve hard drive inaccessibility issues, formatting will be the sure shot way. However, the stored data may be compromised, and you may permanently lose access to it. To avoid losing data, you can use data recovery programs that can recover data from the inaccessible hard drive without altering the file attributes.
Use Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows to recover files from the inaccessible hard drive or any other storage media with similar issues. You can free download this data recovery software on any latest Windows machine and begin scanning the formatted or erased hard drive for your data.
You can select specific volume giving you access denied error. Once you select the volume, click on Scan button to initiate scanning process. Here is the video to recover the lost data:
2. How to Fix this Error via Manual Ways?
a) For Windows 10
If you are running Windows 10 then follow below steps to access your inaccessible drive:
- Right-click on the inaccessible drive.
- Now go to the ‘Properties’ section.
- Select the ‘Security’ and click on the ‘Edit’ button.
- The “Permissions for New Volume (E:)” dialog box appears, as shown in the figure below. Click the ‘Add’ button to continue.
- Add a new user named ‘Authenticated User’ and Click ‘OK’.
- From the permission section, give ‘full control’ to newly added user and click ‘OK’.
- The dialog box will show two options: ‘Continue’ or ‘Cancel’.
- Press Continue… and Cancel at last.
- Now, you are done.
b) For Windows 7
In the case of Windows 7, you might get that error if you are running HomeGroup and have shared a root drive E:, and finally, you have left the HomeGroup. This situation would deny you any access to the drive that was shared and would give you the following error message.
To resolve this issue, go to the Windows Explorer and follow the below mentioned steps:
- Right-click on the inaccessible hard drive.
- Click Properties.
- Go to the Security tab, and then click Advanced.
- Click ‘Edit’ by going to the Owner tab.
- Modify the ownership of the desired account.
Alternatively, you can also try the following option if you are not able to access any file or folder on a Windows 7 drive.
- Right-click on the inaccessible file or folder.
- Click Properties.
- Select the Security tab.
- Click your name Under Group or username. This would show you the permissions you have to access the file and folder.
You can also try the following method:
- Change the drive letter for an inaccessible hard drive.
- Run the following command: chkdsk /r I:
- Try to boot into the safe mode and access the HDD.
- Try accessing the HDD in Windows 7 Ultimate and Home Premium.
- You will be able to access the drive, as chkdsk command would have deleted the files that were causing the problem.
Reformat Portable Hard Drive Windows 10 Windows 7
c) For Windows Vista
You can also face a similar kind of situation while working with Windows Vista.
Like Windows 7, you can also check the permissions of the file or folder in Windows Vista.
- Go to the Properties by right-clicking the file or folder.
- Click the Security tab.
- From usernames or Group, check the permissions you have by clicking your name.
You can also check if the problem is due to an encrypted file or not, by following the below mentioned steps.
- Right-click on the inaccessible hard drive.
- Click Properties.
- Click the General tab-> Advanced.
- See the checkbox encrypt is selected or not.
- If yes, then get the certificate used for encryption to open the file. The encryption certificate lies with the person who creates the file.
You need to have an encryption key or certificates for those Windows edition in which the Encrypting File System (EFS) is not fully supported. For example, Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, and Windows Vista Home Premium do not support it so that you can follow the below mentioned steps.
- Open the Command Prompt.
- Type Cipher.exe /d on the command prompt to decrypt the file.
- Change the encrypted file.
- Copy the decrypted file on your computer’s hard disk.
- Import keys and EFS certificates.
- Open the Command Prompt.
- Type Cipher.exe /r to back up EFS certificates and keys.
For Windows XP
In the case of Windows XP, you might face the “Access is denied” issue if you have used an earlier version of Windows to create a volume based on NTFS file system and then installed Windows XP.
A change in the version of the operating system changes the security ID of the user. As the security ID of the person who created the folder was different on an earlier version of the Windows, in spite of the same username and password you do not have the permission to open the folder after you perform the following steps.
- The actual location of the ‘My Documents’ folder has been changed before installing Windows XP professional.
- Install Windows XP Professional, by formatting the primary partition.
For resolution turn off the Simple File Sharing option and take ownership of the folder.
- Open ‘My Computer’.
- Go to Tools->Folder->View.
- Go to Advanced Settings and clear the Use simple file sharing checkbox.
- Click OK.
- Right-click the desired folder for ownership and click Properties.
- Click the Security tab.
- Click OK on the Security message if any.
- Click Advanced->Owner tab.
- Click your username in the Name list.
- Click OK.
- In case you get an error message, click ‘Yes’.
- Click OK.
- Reapply the permissions and security settings.