Open This PC and right-click the volume or the external hard drive to Format.Ģ. If you choose to do a full format, it’s strongly recommended to backup the disk at first.ġ. Please make the choice according to your needs. However, it will skip the error checking during formatting, thus the previous disk problems may not be thoroughly solved. With this option checked, your lost data is more likely to be recovered. ◉ A “quick format” is much faster than full format, because it only deletes the file system journaling and won’t delete all these files completely. ◉ You can’t format a system drive (the partition with system installed like C:). This file system is usually used on the USB drive. ◉ You can’t format a drive larger than 32GB to FAT32. Whichever way you take, please note the following: There is more than one way to format a hard drive, you can either do it in File Explorer, Command Prompt or Disk Management. Retrieve lost data after formatting a hard drive Backup hard drive to avoid data loss caused by formatting Next is the guide to format hard drive, you can combine it with either Method 1 or Method 2 to avoid data loss. In this case, you can try 2 different approaches to avoid data loss caused by formatting - one is to back up the hard drive in advance, the other is to retrieve the data afterward. If you simply want to change the file system from FAT32 to NTFS, then you can use the command line of “convert” instead of “format” and it won’t erase any data. If you truly want to format hard drive to solve more potential problems and improve your computer’s performance, then whether it's a HDD or an SSD, no matter you want to format FAT32 to NTFS on local drive, or convert NTFS to FAT32 on external hard drive/USB drive, this operation will erase all the data on the disk. This is a question that requires specific analysis. So, is there any way to reformat hard drive without losing data?

But if you are trying to reformat an used hard drive or external hard drive, like converting NTFS to FAT32 or vice versa, your important files stored on the disk will be all deleted, which is quite frustrating. If you're formatting a new hard drive that hasn't been used, well, you have nothing to lose yet. Can you format a hard drive without losing data? > As for a used hard drive, you can format it to change file system, clean up system files, free up disk space, remove viruses and malware, etc.īut since the process usually deletes everything on the disk, you may wonder how to format hard drive without losing data. > For a brand new hard drive, you need to partition and format it for initialization. What is disk formatting? It means to erase all the data on a disk and set up a file system for data reading and writing.

Windows 8 format external drive