How to format a hard disk without installing operating system?

There are two ways of formatting a hard disk, either formatting and installing an operating system or formatting a drive at the windows level which requires no operating system.

Have you meet a case where you will need to format your hard disk, not because you want to install an operating system, but because you want to clear you private data from being accessed by another person, maybe the person buying? It’s true that you might have decided to sale your hard disk, but now what do you need to do if you don’t have any operating system to install on the drive? Well for some people it’s normal and very OK, because they don’t have any secret data to hide from anyone. If you had to sale your hard disk, due to either problems or need of money for other things, that’s no problem, but now the difference is; will you have to just give out the drive just like that, because you have sold it? Maybe you can but I cannot.

First selling a second handed and installed drive is different from selling just a drive. I quiet remember a time I negotiated a price with somebody who had to buy a drive I told him I was selling. This guy agreed to buy it for a certain amount, and we both agreed that he will come in the evening the following day, but he came in the morning to collect the drive, so lucky I had not taken his money yet.

He told me he had a lot of things to back up into that drive and the owner of the computer in which his files are saved is about to format his computer, so he needs it immediately removed ells he might clear everything. I believe I was not wicked to say “no I won’t give you now” because I had a lot of files to take out of the disk. This guy wanted the drive that time mainly because he needed notes on web programming, and he was afraid he might loss them if he had to wait till I call him to come for it. The reason why I refused is simply because I had these notes photocopied while he was there with me, but he refused copying for himself. I told him, he will surely need them one day, but he damned the whole thing. I actually knew he lied about the person with the computer with his files in.

When he finally agreed that I should move my data off, I had to but I had no operating system to install while I format the drive, since I feared he or anyone working on the drive might come across files I didn’t find to take off. What if it where you, what will you do to get your files secured and to be sure no one has even a single part of your files? Formatting the disk is a solution, but what if you have no operating system as in my own case? You shouldn’t even ask me why, because I was not a technician by then, but I could format. Since all the people I knew to be computer owners had their own computers formatted themselves, there will be no need for me spending money on CD’s I will not use to gain back my money.

I was confused at first on what to do, but very careful about letting my files go just like that. One of the reasons I even insist on it that much was because my father had some of his important files saved on my computer and he will just kill me if someone had them in their keeping apart from me. After a long while thinking, it came in my mind that I had once formatted a drive when I just started computer maintenance training. This is what I did bellow.

I first of all shutdown the computer I was currently using at that moment.

I connected the two drives at first but the computer could not boot again, I think it was confused on which to load an operating system from due to my failure to configure.

I configured the drive to be sold to jumper secondary slave and the main drive I used to secondary master.

Boot the computer to windows level, though it took a bit longer than normal to load, but I didn’t care since I knew I will be taking of the drive after it’s formatted so it doesn’t have to disturb my head anymore.

In My Computer, I had three drives indicating. Two partitions from my current drive and one from the newly connected, C, D and E. E in that case was the newly connected and I knew I had to format that one.

Now it’s your own case take it that way, and follow the steps bellow and you will have it formatted in just no time.

Click start then “run”

Type CMD then Enter.

In the command prompt window, type in CLS to clear screen. A line of code appears

 C: \Documents and Settings\your computers name>, type in the following command line.

Format E: that should be the drive level, so change E to the corresponding drive later you have then enter.

A line of code appears asking you to insert a new drive to E: confirm with enter and your drive is formatting. Wait till it counts up to 100% and it should stop.

You are done and your drive is formatted, same as I got mine formatted and working but not installed. At this level the drive could be used as a slave to store files on your computer if it was meant for that.

This procedure really does work for “format had disk without installing an operating system”, but what if it had more than one partitioned, will you format the two partitions separately? Of course not, except you just want to ruin your drive’s life. This is where you will need a bootable operating system CD, it doesn’t matter if it can produce all the files needed by the system to run, but it should be able to take you to the partitioning screen.

This is a stage where most people will get mashed. If the drive had more than one partition, you have to make sure it’s repartitioned to one, so you can format as one partition and the whole disk. There is a good number of software out there to use in partitioning a hard disk, which really works. But if you not able to get any, then here is also another method.

I will not be teaching you how to format a Computer in this article, but you can follow carefully if you want to learn this first, but I recommend you continue if you already can format computer ells you might get yourself in deep shirt if you try without the formatting knowledge. If you wish to learn formatting first, then here you are “How to format a computer”, but if you already know then you can follow these steps and you should be successful and the end.

Have you already disconnected the drive working? I mean have you disconnected your working drive first? If not then disconnect and connect only the one to be partitioned.

Use the normal procedure of formatting a computer and at the second screen after pressing F8 to agree, delete the two partitions and recreate just one. For example, if your hard disk is 40GB and Partition C: runs 20 GB then D: running the remaining 20 GB, it amounts to 40GB in total. What you will do is this:

Delete the two partitions just as you do when formatting to install an operating system.

Recreate partition C: or D: and make sure no space is left out except the system reserved 8MG. if you had to create 20GB for each partition, you will input 20,000Mb in the area provided to create disk size, but for this case you will type 40,000 which will equal 40GB, without any more space left for the un-partitioned space. The drive becomes one partition and can now be installed if you had to install any operating system, but since you don’t want to install any operating system on it, you can leave it to go through the formatting process, but make sure it doesn’t start copying files before you stop it. If it can’t format no problem, connect the main drive of your computer, then connect the newly partitioned as slave and boot your computer to desktop. 

In My Computer, you should be able to see the newly partitioned disk which contains none or a little system files. Format it now using the procedure I have given above in paragraph 7 8 and 9, you are done and you can sale the drive with a free mind.

Good Luck guys. More posts to the right side of this page.

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