How to format hard drive in BIOS. Formatting via BIOS

All tips

A large number of people face the task of formatting a hard drive through BIOS every day. It is worth noting that it is impossible to format a hard drive using BIOS alone. Therefore, most often, users have in mind the possibility of formatting the hard drive before installing or restoring the operating system.

When the OS is running, it is impossible to completely clean the system partition (most often drive C). An error message will be displayed to you. Therefore, we will discuss in detail the process of formatting a hard drive without starting the OS using your computer's BIOS. There are several main formatting methods via BIOS, we will look at each of them.

To format, you will need a special bootable flash drive or boot disk with a recorded operating system. A disk with a licensed Windows OS is ideal as a boot disk. It is also possible to use a self-created disk with a recorded OS.

First, restart your computer. After starting, you need to press the combination on the keyboard to enter the BIOS (most often it is DEL, F12, F8, Ctrl+F2, Esc - you can read more in this article). The main BIOS window will appear in front of you, in which you need to use the keyboard to click on the " tab Boot".

Now select your disk drive (if using a boot disk) or USB port (if using a bootable flash drive) as the main boot device.

After that, press F10 to exit the BIOS, while saving the changes about boot device priority, and press “OK”. Your computer will reboot and a message about booting from the drive (or flash drive) will appear on the monitor display; to get started, just press any key.

When the language selection screen appears, use the keyboard shortcut Shift+F10 to access the command line. If you use a disk with Windows 8, then you need to open the command line differently by following the steps: " Choose language" - "diagnostics" - "additional features" - "command line".

When starting a computer from a boot disk or flash drive, the drive letters may not match those you are used to. Formatting a hard drive through the BIOS will completely delete all data, so you need to be careful when choosing a drive. To determine the real letter designation of the hard drive in the command line, you must enter the command wmic logicaldisk get deviceid, volumename, size, description.

To format the selected disk, write the command on the command line (instead of X is the designation of your disk):

format /FS:NTFS X: /q – fast format in the NTFS system
format /FS:FAT32 X: /q – fast format in FAT32

Press "Enter" and wait for formatting to complete.

Formatting via Windows Installer GUI

The second way to format a hard drive through the BIOS is using the Windows Installer. To do this, after selecting the language, click “Next”.

After that, select "Full installation".

Select the hard drive that needs to be formatted and click “Configure”.

To format the disk, select "Format".

Formatting via ERD Commander

There is another effective way to quickly format a hard drive without loading the OS. To do this, you need to download the ERD Commander program and create a boot disk based on it. In the BIOS, select the disk drive as the main boot device (you already know how to do this). When the program starts, go to the "MicroSoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset" section. In all the requests that appear, click “Next” until a working window appears, in which we select the “Disk Cleanup” item and format the hard drive.

Thus, we have looked at all the main ways to format a hard drive through the BIOS. If there are boot disks with other operating systems, the names of the items may change slightly, but the logic of the procedures will not change.

The BIOS itself does not have a format function. This system utility is only a cleaning tool that bypasses the loading of the operating system. This question arises because the media is not formatted from the inside, because the version of the OS being used is recorded on it. Below you will find the main ways to format a hard drive via BIOS and instructions for them.

How to format a hard drive from a boot disk or flash drive

Full formatting of a hard drive is equivalent to an operation to destroy all data on its internal memory. After this procedure, you can reinstall the operating system without fear of errors or other unpleasant moments. Just before you completely clean your hard drive, you should check whether you have copied all the necessary files. It will be difficult to recover information, and in some cases it will not be possible to do so at all. Formatting a hard drive via BIOS is carried out in several ways:

using external media;
using a special utility;
during Windows installation.

The first method of formatting a hard drive via BIOS involves booting from some drive. It uses a flash drive, CD or DVD. One of them must contain a special wrapper program for cleaning. The most commonly used is a Live CD, designed specifically for this purpose. You can copy it using the popular UltraISO utility. After preparing such a boot device, follow the instructions on how to completely format your hard drive:

With the computer turned off, insert the prepared media into the drive or USB connector.
When starting, pay attention to which key will be indicated next to the phrase “Enter Setup”. This could be F8, F12, F2 or Del. The latter is more often used on laptops. Press this button several times.
When going into the BIOS, go to the BOOT menu and change the priority from Flooppy to CD-ROM or USB-FDD, taking into account the type of boot media you have.
To save the settings, click F10, then Y and Enter.
Restart your computer. If the steps were performed correctly, the program image will load, where you can clean up the desired partition.

Formatting a disk using the ERD Commander program

The second option, how to format drive C via BIOS, is based on the use of a special program called ERD Commander. It helps even if the system fails to boot. You need to download its ISO image, which you then burn to a DVD or flash drive. If you were able to complete these steps, follow these instructions:

Using the method described above, enter the BIOS menu and change the boot order, which depends on the external media with the recorded program.
Restart your computer. In the menu that opens, go to the MicroSoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset item, and then click “Next” 2-3 times and in the “Cleaning” window that opens.
Select the desired section.

Formatting your hard drive when installing Windows

The next method is how to format a hard drive through BIOS. It is carried out during the process of reinstalling the operating system using the Windows distribution. During this procedure, it is possible to clear any of the partitions. The peculiarity of this method is that all programs that were used previously will be deleted, and the operating system itself will be updated.

The concept of distribution is a form of software distribution. It contains a set of utilities necessary for the initial initialization of the OS. You can download the distribution yourself or use the disk drive included with your computer for recovery. In the first option, you will have to burn the ISO image to a CD or flash drive again. Further actions are as follows:

Similar to the instructions described above, set the CD-ROM or USB-FDD to boot first.
After the reboot, the recovery console will launch - as a user, select the OS there to log in to.
Enter the administrator account password. If it's not there, press Enter.
In the command line that appears, type format c:, then confirm by pressing Enter.
If desired, set the file system - NTFS or FAT. Choose between quick and complete cleaning methods. As a result, the command could be format c: /Q /FS:NTFS. Here Q refers to quick cleaning.
Wait for the cleaning operation to complete, and then follow the system prompts.

Video: how to format a hard drive in Windows 7

In recent years, computer literacy of the population has increased slightly. In any case, many people know about the programs, and some can already figure out their home router themselves, since they can’t get anything meaningful from the technical support of most domestic providers.

But still, the overwhelming majority of users do not know anything about the computer that would be more difficult than spending time on social networks. In particular, if some serious software failures occur that can only be fixed by completely reinstalling the OS, they have no idea how to format a disk with Windows 7.

Of course, such a need does not arise very often, but if a beginner encounters it, then there can be a lot of problems. That is why it will probably be useful for you to read this article in order to form your own idea of the process.

The essence of formatting. Why is it needed?

Formatting is the process by which the surface of a hard drive is marked. The most basic thing is low-level formatting, which is performed only at the manufacturer. We are interested in the high-level process that modifies logical partitions on disks.

Before formatting a disk with Windows 7, the user must determine the file system type, cluster size and other technical characteristics of the newly created partition. This should not be taken lightly, since the survivability of the media and the amount of free space on it depend on these operations.

What is the best cluster size?

In particular, if you set it to the maximum possible and store only text documents on such a disk, you will waste your free space. Let's assume that you have defined the volume as 512 KB. That is, by writing just one text document file of 20 B to disk, you are occupying an entire cluster, 99% of which will be wasted.

How to format the system partition?

If you know a little about computers, then you perfectly remember the procedure for standard preparation of a new section. You can right-click on its icon and select “Format” from the context menu. But there is one problem.

The fact is that you won’t be able to format the system partition (on which the system is installed). If you try, a warning will appear stating that this operation is impossible. How to be?

Using a boot disk

If you really want to find out how to format a disk with Windows 7, you will have to get the boot disk from which you installed the system. If there is none, you need to make it yourself. To do this, you need to write an image downloaded from the network (or created by yourself) to

You need to insert it into the drive, restart the computer, and set the BIOS to boot from the CD/DVD drive. You will have to find out how to do this yourself, since different manufacturers provide different versions of BIOS with radically different interfaces.

As a rule, all the information you need should be posted on the motherboard manufacturer's website. So, having learned how to format a disk through the BIOS, you will have to find this information.

So, immediately after booting from the optical drive, you will be taken to the OS installation menu. Since we are talking about Windows 7, even the most “green” beginners can relax: everything is so clear (almost at the level of intuition) that even a child can handle it.

Immediately after the first dialog box appears, select “Install”. Next, select the required OS version (if you enter the key, the installation program will select the required one). After this, work with disks appears. Having finally understood how to format the system disk, find out its letter in advance, otherwise you can easily lose your entire collection of music or movies.

That's what we need. Select the required section by left-clicking on it. At the very bottom of the window there should be a “Disk Settings” link. Once you select it, you will see other options appear. You need the Format section. Select the required file system and click OK. Then you can either continue installing Windows, or install some other operating system.

Since the system itself offers to format the disk during installation, if you do not have any experience, it is better to leave the settings that are offered by default.

Live CD

If you have ever dealt with system administration, then you probably know about Live CDs, which in the case of Windows OS are often called BartPE. From such media you can not only boot from the BIOS, but also get a fully functional system as a result. Since formatting the system disk under a working OS will not work (this is not Linux, after all), this option may be the only correct one.

Since the system is loaded from a “live CD” into RAM, you can right-click on any disk (including the system disk), and then select “Format” from the context menu. All subsequent actions are no different from those that we have already described in this article.

The same can be done using an installation disk with any Linux distribution. As a rule, they all have Live CD mode, so you don’t have to do any dances with the console. Ubuntu is ideal, the interface of which is as simple and intuitive as possible.

Another variant

But it often happens that two systems are installed on one disk at once. In particular, this happens due to inexperience when a person mistakenly installs several copies of an identical OS on one physical disk.

This cannot be done, because such a combination may well cause problems when loading and operating programs. In addition, the human factor cannot be ruled out when users delete system files from the second system from under the first system. Of course, there is no need to talk about stable work in the latter case.

So how to format a drive with Windows 7 then? Everything is much simpler here.

Cleaning via context menu

To do this, you need to go to “My Computer”, and then select the drive on which the copy of Windows you don’t need is installed. There is no need to worry that the Windows you are currently working on will be targeted. We have already indicated that in this case the system itself will not allow you to do this.

Next, you should right-click on the section you need, and then select “Format” from the menu that appears. A dialog box will also appear asking you to specify the file system type. It all depends on your preferences and requirements.

File system selection

The main (and most reliable) is NTFS, but if necessary, FAT32 can be used. We have already written above about determining the size of a standard cluster. As for the type of formatting, here again everything depends only on you.

But! You need to carefully understand how to format an NTFS hard drive. It should be taken into account that the reliability of this file system is based on the fact that it creates a sufficiently large recovery partition.

In the case when you are preparing a disk whose volume exceeds several hundred GB, this can be sacrificed. But you shouldn’t mark disks with a capacity of 40 GB and below this way. However, where can you find such “dinosaurs” now? But if you need to prepare the hard drive of an old computer, then our recommendations will certainly be useful to you.

If you check the “Quick (Table of Contents Cleanup”) checkbox, the process will not take much time, but there will still be a chance that deleted files from the disk can be recovered.

If you intend to sell this hard drive, we recommend that you uncheck this box. After clicking on the “Start” button, all data will be erased from the media, including the operating system installed there. This may take some time, which will directly depend on both the power of your computer and the size of the disk.

Perform cleaning through Disk Management

This method is somewhat more reliable. Having understood Windows 7 using this method, you must first click on the “Start” button, and in the menu that appears, select “Control Panel”. In the Panel that opens, look for the “Administration” option.

In the dialog box that opens, select the “Computer Management” shortcut. A control window for the utility of the same name will open, in which we are interested in the “Storage devices” item. In it you need to double-click on the “Disk Management” line.

After all these manipulations, a window will open with a list of storage devices installed in the system. Select the disk you need from it and right-click on it. The same context menu will open, in which you should select the “Format” item. You have already been familiarized with further actions above.

Using the Command Line Emulator

Now we have reached the most “advanced” method, which is used only by the most experienced users. This way, formatting a disk with Windows 7 is very convenient and quick, but you need to remember or write down all the commands that we will give you in the text below.

It’s best to simply copy them into and then paste them into the command line using the right mouse button (“Paste”).

Once again, pay attention: carefully monitor the drive letter that you need to format. A mistake can cause you to lose data that is of considerable value (to you, anyway).

First you need to run the emulator with administrator rights. This is done simply. First, click on the “Start” button and look for the “Search” field there. Type the CMD command into it, and then press the Enter key. A window with search results will open on the right side, in which you need to right-click on the file of the same name and select the “Run as Administrator” option in the context menu.

Having decided how to format a disk partition with the system or unnecessary data, first of all write the command format Y: on the command line, where Y should be replaced by the letter of the partition you need. We repeat once again: make no mistake! There have been cases when absent-minded users lost all archives with family videos.

After this, you need to press the Enter key, after which the data will be completely formatted. Important! When using command line emulation mode, no warnings are issued about the possible loss of important data in the event of an error, so be extremely careful when entering commands!

A little about flash drives

If your external drive asks you to format it before using it, you can also use the Command Prompt. All steps of the action are exactly the same, but the main command will have a slightly different form: format Y: /Q. As in the previous case, the letter Y is the designation of your disk, which you need to change to a value relevant to your case, and the key Q stands for Quick, which indicates a quick format with a simple clearing of the table of contents.

What is it for? The fact is that you should not completely format flash drives again, as this once again reduces the number of rewrite cycles.

When the operating system is running, full formatting of the hard drive is impossible. The fact is that the operating system will not allow you to erase the partition on which it is installed. Therefore, in this article we will tell you about several ways to format a hard drive without using an operating system.

Using Windows bootable media

Method 1 – Using the Command Line

To perform the formatting procedure using this method, you will need a disk with a recorded installation of Windows 7 or 8. A bootable USB flash drive with a recorded OS image is also suitable.

Step 1.
To boot from the installation media, you need to restart the computer and open the BIOS shell (depending on the motherboard, these can be the “DEL”, “F2”, “Ctrl+F2”, “F8”, “F12”, “Esc” keys) ).

Step 2.
After this, the BIOS shell will launch, in which you need to go to the “Boot” tab (control the arrows on the keyboard).

Step 3.
Open the "Boot Device Priority" menu.

Step 4.
As the first bootable media, select either a floppy drive or a USB port that will have the name of your flash drive. The disk drive is selected if you have a CD with a recorded image, USB is selected if you have a bootable flash drive.

Step 5.
After this, you need to save the changes and exit the program shell. You can do this by pressing the “F10” key or go to the “Exit” menu and click “save & exit”. After this, the PC will automatically reboot and you will see a message asking you to press an arbitrary key to continue booting from the media (this message does not appear when booting from a flash drive), to continue press an arbitrary key, for example, spacebar or Enter.

Step 6.
Next, the process of copying the Windows installation files will follow and the installation wizard will start. When the wizard starts (the language selection window appears), press the keyboard shortcut “Shift+F10”, which will launch the command line. If you are using an installation disk with Windows 8, then you need to start the command line as follows:

Select your system language.
Go to the Diagnostics menu.
Open the “Additional Features” sub-item.
Launch Command Prompt.

Step 7
Formatting the hard drive will completely erase your data, so it is important not to make the wrong choice of disk. The problem is that when running from bootable media, you may not see the actual drive letters. To determine the partition letters of your hard drive, type the following at the command line:

"wmic logicaldisk get deviceid, volumename, size, description."

After entering the command, press Enter. The console will display available information about the partitions (drive letter, size and description).

Step 8
To perform formatting, enter the following format command:

"format /FS: [file system type] [drive letter]: /q"

For example:

"format /FS:NTFS C: /q" - quick formatting in the NTFS file system

Press Enter. The process of formatting the selected partition will begin.

Method 2 - Using Windows Setup

This method involves using the Windows Installer shell.

Step 1.
After the language selection window appears, select the Russian language and click “Next”. We start the installation by clicking the corresponding “Install” button.

Step 2.
Then you need to choose which type of installation to use: “Update” or “Full installation”. In our case, the second point is necessary.

Step 3.
In the next window you will be asked to select the partition in which the new OS will be written. Select the partition you want to format and click Disk Setup. The Disk Control Panel will appear, where you can format the partitions, delete them, and re-partition them.

Note: When starting from bootable media, the drive letters will most likely be missing, so make sure you are formatting the correct drive. It is best to remember the sizes of each partition in advance, since you can use them to navigate which disk is which.

Step 4.
To start formatting the partition, click “Format”.

After this, the disk will be formatted.

Using third party boot utilities

Method 3 – Using Third Party Boot Utilities

If for some reason you do not have an installation image of the operating system, you can use third-party boot utilities. One of these is ERD Comader. Based on it, you can create a boot disk or a removable flash drive. After you have created bootable media, select it as the main boot device in the BIOS (we discussed how to do this above). After downloading the program, go to the “MicroSoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset” section. In response to numerous requests and pop-up windows, click “Next” all the time until the main working window loads (screenshot below), where you need to select the “Disk Cleanup” item. This will launch the Disk Cleanup Wizard.

Note: In addition to this utility, there is also a third-party software package called “Hiren`s Boot CD”. In its composition you will find many utilities for working with disks and more. It is also accompanied by detailed documentation.

There are times when we need to format a hard drive via Bios. This may be needed immediately after purchasing a new hard drive, when installing or reinstalling an operating system, or as an anti-virus tool. In this material I will tell you how to format a disk via BIOS, introduce the reader to various methods of this formatting, and also describe programs for formatting via BIOS that will help us with this.

If you want to know how to enter the BIOS, we have collected everything for you for each device.

Typically, the need to cleanse via BIOS arises in a situation where full access to the corresponding Windows OS tools is impossible, and everything must be done from scratch. I’ll immediately make a reservation that the companies that developed the existing BIOS versions - Award Software (AwardBios), American Megatrends (AmiBios), Phoenix Technologies (PhoenixBIOS) and others did not include a tool for formatting the hard drive in their bios versions, while access to the hard drive in the BIOS available by default.

Consequently, “formatting a hard drive via BIOS” can only be conditional; in such an algorithm it acts only as a logistics link, allowing the user to use it to perform the necessary operations to format the hard drive.

Let me make a reservation right away that formatting (especially full formatting) completely deletes all information on the disk being formatted, so if you have something valuable there, then before formatting it is better to copy it to a flash drive, another hard drive, send it to the cloud, and so on.

Supporting tools

To format, we need a program that will help format the hard drive. Such a program is usually included in the boot disk (flash drive) along with the operating system installer; it is also included in the system recovery disk (Live CD) programs; in addition, it can be sold separately or on disk.

Using the command line

Once you have decided to format your hard drive, you can select auxiliary tools. The easiest option is to use a regular Windows boot disk, which almost every user has. To use its capabilities we need to run it through the BIOS.

To do this, we restart the computer (if it was turned off, turn it on), and immediately after the start, quickly press several times on the button responsible for entering the BIOS - usually this is the “Delete” key, but there are also variations with the F8, F12, Ctrl + F2 keys and Escape.
After entering the BIOS, go to the Boot tab, select the “Boot Device Priority” item in it and press “Enter”.
We install our CDROM or DVDROM as the main boot device (in first place), click on F10 and save our changes by clicking “Ok”.
The computer will start to boot and the message “Press any key to boot from CD or DVD” will appear in front of you. Press any key.
On the language selection screen, press Shift+F10, which will give you access to the command line. If you are a Windows 8 user, then go to the path select language - diagnostics - advanced options - command line.
At the command line, type the following command (instead of C, you can enter another partition of your hard drive - D, E, etc.):

format /FS:NTFS C: /q – fast format in the NTFS system

format /FS:FAT32 C: /q – fast format in FAT32

You can write it even simpler, for example: format c:/q

Click “Ok” and wait for the end of the formatting process.

Using the Windows Installer Features

We can also use the built-in capabilities of the Windows installer to format the hard drive via BIOS (new version). We also launch through the BIOS as in the previous case, only in the Windows installer language selection menu we click “Next”. Then select “Full installation”, select the disk to format (click on it), then click “Disk Settings” and select “Format” there.

Formatting from a flash drive

As a boot tool with a Windows installation, you can use a flash drive on which the Windows OS installation is recorded. In this case, the flash drive itself must be made bootable using special programs (for example, UltraISO). Although sometimes it’s enough to simply copy the Windows installer to a USB flash drive and run it from the BIOS. Don’t forget to make the flash drive the first boot device in the BIOS as shown above (sometimes in the “Hard Disk Drive” menu item you need to specify the flash drive first and the CD (DVD) second).

We use the Acronis Disk Director Suite program

This program is usually included in the LiveCD and other Windows OS builds, and is an auxiliary utility for working with the hard drive. After launching the application, select the hard drive you need to format, right-click on it, in the menu that appears, click on “Format”, select the type of file system and confirm the operation by clicking “Run”. After the operation is completed, reboot.

You can visually see how this program works in the video:

Paragon Hard Disk Manager

An alternative to the previous one, a program with good functionality and good experience. The algorithm for working with it is similar to the previous program - select a disk - right mouse button - Format Partition - select a file system - Format. After completion, reboot as usual.

DBAN

You can also use the free DBAN tool, which easily cleans and formats your hard drive. To take advantage of its functionality, this program needs to be made bootable from a flash drive; the appropriate software will help us with this (for example, Universal USB Loader).

How it looks is visually shown in the video:

Conclusion

As we can see, formatting a hard drive via BIOS is carried out using auxiliary tools in the form of a boot disk or flash drive on which the Windows OS installer is installed. The capabilities of the latter make it easy to install, both using the command line and using the Windows installer itself. At the same time, there is always an alternative in the form of various auxiliary programs included in various LiveCD assemblies; these tools are quite enough to easily and quickly format the hard drive we need.