How to format Hard Drive with Command Prompt

The process of formatting the hard drive on your system is pretty easy. Generally, users have to use the Disk Management tool to create, shrink or delete drive partition. Due to any reason, if you want to format any hard disk partition of your system using the CMD, this guide is made just for you. Follow these instructions mentioned here to format the particular partition of the HDD safely and securely using the Command Prompt.

 

How to format a drive using the Command Prompt or DISKPART

Just follow these instructions to format any driver simply bypassing commands from the command line.

 

PROCESS 1 – FORMAT DISK USING THE CMD

The easiest way to format the disk is using the Command Prompt.

1. Pressing the Windows key+E will open up the File Explorer.

2. Now, you have to click on “This PC“.

3. Note the drive letter of the problematic drive.

(Example– In this case, the drive letter of the SD card is “F:“)

 

Check The Drive Letter Min

 

Close File Explorer window.

4.  Write “cmd” in the search box.



5. Then, right-click on “Command Prompt” and choose “Run as administrator“.

 

Cmd Search New Min

 

Command Prompt with administrative rights will be opened.

6. Here, type down this command and hit Enter.

vol drive letter:

 

[NOTE – Replace the ‘drive letter:’ with the drive letter of the drive on your computer.

In this case, it is the ‘F:’ letter. The command will be  –

vol F:

]

 



Volume F Min

 

7. Then, execute these codes to format the drive.

format drive letter:
New Volume
Y

 

[NOTE – Just the same step as before, replace the ‘drive letter:’ with the particular drive letter of the drive.

As the drive letter is the ‘F:’ letter. The command will be  –

format F:

When you are asked to ‘Enter the current volume label’, type the volume name.

We have used ‘New Volume’ as the volume label. You can easily alter it later from File Explorer.

Finally, press the ‘Y‘ key and hit Enter to complete the format.

]

 

Format F Min

 

This way you can easily format the drive.

 

Additional Options of formatting USING CMD – 

1. Quick Format –

The usual formatting of the drive takes a long amount of time. You can quickly format the drive.

a. Open the Command Prompt with the administrative rights.

b. Execute this command and hit Enter.

format drive letter: /q

 

[Just replace the drive letter with the particular drive letter of the drive.

For the ‘F:’ drive, the code will be  –

format F:/q
]
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The drive will be formatted way faster than before.

 

2. Specific format –

You can use the specific commands to format the drive in specific formats.

a. Open the Command Prompt.

b. Paste this command, modify it according to your requirement, and hit Enter.

format drive letter: /FS: Filesystem 

 

[

NOTE

Replace the ‘drive letter:’ with the ” drive letter of the drive.

In this case, it is the ‘F:’ letter.

Now, the File System in the command represents the specific format in which you want to format the drive.

Example

If the drive letter of the drive is “F:”, the commands will be –

Formatting the disk F: in the  NTFS file system –

 format F: /fs:NTFS

Formatting the disk F: in the  FAT32 file system

 format F: /fs:fat32

Formatting the disk F: in the exFAT file system –

 format F: /fs:exFAT

]

 

Format F Ntfs Min

 

This way you can format the drive in any choice of the format you prefer the most.

 

3. Low-Level Format –

All the formatting processes discussed so far don’t permanently remove all the data from the drive. To completely format a drive you have to low-level format it.

1. Open the Command Prompt with the administrative rights.

2. In the terminal, paste this command and hit Enter.

format drive letter: /FS:Filesystem /p:n

 

[

Simply, alter the drive letter with the drive letter of the drive you are trying to format.

n” in the command represents the number of times that you want to write zeros in every sector. We recommend you to set this to “1” as even this single pass requires an incredible amount of time.

As we are running this code on the ‘F:’ drive to write zeroes for once,  the command will look this –

format F: /fs:NTFS /p:1

]

 

N1 Format Low Level Formatting Min

 

This way you can easily low-level format the drive.

Warning – 

1. This process will erase all the data on the drive and replace it with zeros. This way, you won’t be able to recover any of your data (which is partially recoverable in high-level formatting) from the drives.

2. This process takes a huge amount of time.

 

PROCESS 2 – FORMAT DISK USING THE DISKPART

You can format the drive using the DISKPART system.

1. Type “cmd” in the Search box beside the Windows icon.

2. After that, right-click on “Command Prompt” which appears on the elevated search result, and then click on “Run as administrator“.

 

Cmd Search New Min

 

3. To do this you have to enter diskpart management. Simply copy-paste these two commands one-by-one and hit Enter to execute both of the commands sequentially on your computer.

DISKPART
lIST DISK

 

List Disk Min

 

4. Now, in the list of the disks, you will have to check the “Disk No” that contains the drive.



Check out the size of the disks and then decide which is the disk.

( Example-In this case,  it is the “Disk 1” that we are trying to format.

 

See It

 

5. Now, to format the drive,  copy-paste and modify these commands in Command Prompt window one-by-one and hit Enter after each of them to see the partitions of the disk.

SELECT DISK ( disk no.)
clean

 

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[Replace the ‘disk no’ with the number that represents the drive you want to format.]

All the data and partition in the drive will be deleted as you execute the ‘clean’ command.

6. To create a new partition, copy-paste this command, and then hit Enter to execute it.

create partition primary

 

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7. Finally, it is time to format the drive. Execute this code to format the drive in ntfs format.

format fs=ntfs quick

 

Format Fs Ntfs Quick Min

 

8. You are all done but assigning a new drive letter to the drive. To do so, type this command and hit Enter.

assign

 

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Once you have assigned a drive letter. Close the Command Prompt window.