How to Format Hard Drive and Install Windows Operating System
FORMAT HARDDISK/ HARDDRIVE
Depending on whether you are formatting your master hard drive or slave hard drive the ways of formatting will differ.
To format a Slave Hard drive (Not the hard drive with your current Operating System) you can simply format the drive in two ways, these methods are
1. Simply go into My computers then right click the specific Hard drive you wish to format then simply click Format. From here you can select the format type Fat 32 or NTFS ( NTFS the most common these days as its much faster than Fat 32)
Its also best to click the quick format option as this will dramatically reduce the time it will take to format the Drive. Remember when using this method you must close all applications and files that are being run the computer from that drive otherwise you will not be able to proceed with the format.
2. The next way is to format your hard drive via command prompt. To enter command prompt simply click start then run and enter “cmd” (without the “”) this will then bring up the command line. You can now format from here by simply typing format followed by the drive letter. E.g Format C:/
The next method is for formatting your primary or master drive and the best way to do this is to do it as a part of your windows installation. I will cover the formatting of the hard drive along with the installation of windows O/S below.
Format Hard disk and Install Windows Operating System
Steps
1. The first step is to enter your computers BIOS. To do this when your computer is booting up it may ask you if you wish to enter setup or bios. The most common key to enter your setup/bios is DEL or F1. It may differ depending on what sort of motherboard you have just make sure you look out for the alert to find the appropriate key. If you cant seem to catch the key or if the screen flashes on too quick try pressing the Pause Break key and this will pause the boot up screen for you.
2. The next step is to change the boot up options for your computer. Depending on your motherboard it will be in a different location but it should be quite easy to find with a little searching. When you find it simply change the boot up priority on your computer so that the number 1 priority is to boot from CD or DVD ROM Drive.
3. Once you have setup your boot up priority and saved and exited your BIOS, its time to put your Windows CD into your CD/DVD rom drive and wait for it to do its thing and boot up. You may be presented with an option “If you wish to boot from the CD press any key” where you should press a key for the windows cd booting process begins.
4. Once the windows CD has booted up select from the Menu install Windows. From this point you can choose where about you want to install your operating system files. When starting from scratch the easiest thing to do is to delete all the partitions and start from the beginning. Once you have created the partition sizes you would like (e.g. a 80GB hard drive into two 40GB partitions.) you can select on which partition to install windows. Its always recommended to install windows onto a partition incase one of the partitions fails the other one can be used to retrieve backup data.
5. Now select the type of format FAT 32 or NTFS (NTFS recommended) and once you’ve pressed enter Windows will pretty much take over the rest. You will have to answer a few prompts along the way (admin name, passwords, network settings etc) but that’s about it. The installation of windows usually takes no longer than an 120 minutes , the time taken will depend on how much memory you have, hard drive space and cpu speed.
