Hard drives are riddled with errors and viruses. Errors like “Location is not available - Access Denied” or “Hard drive/disk is not formatted” can be caused by various reasons.If there are a lot of errors and virus problems in the system, we might consider a disk formatting to cleanse the drive, which should work in these circumstances as it wipes out all the data on the computer which includes the viruses and the corrupted files.
Sometimes it is easier to format your computer then try and find a solution. The trade-off is that you will lose all your files if you are not able to make a backup.
Format hard drives as a quick way to remove all files. Formatting is the easiest way to delete all the unwanted data and saves a lot of time. It will delete files that you didn’t even know existed. Sometimes the computer might be filled with a lot of temporary files that are hard to locate and delete. In this case, formatting the hard drive might be the easy way out to get a fresh system. Before formatting, make sure you backup of files that you need first.
Format Commands
Formatting a hard drive can be easily done nowadays. In Windows, you can perform format with the built-in tool by right-clicking on the drive letter and select format... You can also choose the Command Prompt to execute the format process with more options.
The format command is a Command Prompt command used to format a specified partition on a hard disk drive or flash drive to a specified file system.
The basic format command syntax is
format drive_letter: [/q] [/c] [/x] [/l] [/fs:filesystem] [/r:revision] [/d] [/v:label] [/p:count] [/?]
There are actually different types of formatting processes. In Windows operating systems, there are two kinds of format: quick format and full format. As indicated by their name, they differ in the amount of time needed to complete a formatting. However, there is more behind this seemingly obvious difference.
Command format /q will perform a quick format on your chosen hard drive. It will only erase the file table from the filesystem. The operating system will not locate any files without their index so when you look at the hard drive you would not see any data and assume the drive is erased. In fact, the files are actually still there untouched and can be accessed again with the right tool. This is how software like H Data Recovery Software can recover data from formatted disks. Their special algorithm enables you to scan, locate and reconstruct the deleted files.
Command format /p will perform a full format. It will write zero to every sector of the drive to overwrite old data. This write-zero process is also known as erasing. The exact amount of time required to complete the process depends on the capacity of the HDD. The larger the capacity the longer it will take. As a Full Format would wipe your drives clean, the data stored on them will become unrecoverable. This is very useful when you are disposing of or recycling your hard drives containing sensitive or personal information.
Please note that beginning in Windows Vista, by default the format drive_letter: command equals to format drive_letter: /p, which writes zeros to the whole disk once, unless you specifically use the quick format command format drive: /q. In Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows, the format command does not perform the basic drive sanitation. You can repeat the write zero process multiple times by adding a count to the command, for example, format d: /fs:NTFS /p:3 will zero-fill the D: drive 3 times and set the file system to NTFS .
How to Recover Files from format Command
The quick format (format /q) doesn't overwrite any actual data so you can successfully recover the deleted files with data recovery software like H Data Recovery Software's format recovery module.
To recover formatted files, free download and install H Data Recovery and launch the software. Choose the format recovery module and select the partition you wish to recover files from. Let the scanning process run on its own and when it is done, you can choose a directory to store all the recoverable files.
The full format (format or format /p:count) is designed to overwrite any residual data patterns, rendering all data unrecoverable, especially with multiple overwrite passes. Even with advanced forensic tools and lab equipment, only negligible fragments may be recovered.
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