Disk formatting ( Win. Vista & 7 )

Disk formatting

• WARNING:  These notes relating to formatting are just for reference.    DO NO FORMAT A DISK UNLESS  SPECIFICALLY DIRECTED TO DO SO  BY YOUR TUTOR.  The hard disk inside your computer is formatted ready for use when you first purchase your computer.  You can think of formatting a disk as printing lines on a notepad so that you can later write on the notepaper.  When PCs were first introduced they all had floppy disk drives rather than the CD/DVD drives that we are familiar with today.  There are still many PCs with built-in floppy disk drives and you can insert a removable floppy disk into these drives.  Floppy disks are generally supplied pre-formatted, but sometimes it may become necessary to reformat the disk.   WARNING: If you format a disk then you will lose any data contained on that disk.  Formatting wipes a disk clean! 

• To format a removable disk, first open the Windows Explorer (by right clicking on the Start button and from the popup menu displayed, selecting the Explore command).

• Select the removable disk you wish to format, as illustrated. 

• Right click in the disk you want to format and from the popup menu displayed, select the Format command.

• You will see the Format Removable Disk dialog box, as illustrated.

• To start the format process click on the Start button, but remember that if you do this you will lose any data contained on the removable disk.  You will see a warning dialog box.    TIP: Never use the Quick Format option.  While this option is very quick, the results may be unreliable.