Formatting c drive windows 7

Turn off your computer. Your computer will have to reboot in order to read the Windows 7 installation disc. Open your "Start" menu, then click on "Shut Down. Power on your computer. When your computer powers back on, it will read the installation disc and begin the formatting process. Format your C drive. After the computer has recognized the installation disc, you will be prompted to press any key on your keyboard to continue.

The installation wizard will then appear on your screen. Select your language from the "Install Windows" page, then click on "Next" to proceed.

Read and review the Windows 7 license terms. In order to proceed to the next screen, you will be required to place a check mark in the box next to "I accept the license terms. Select "Drive options advanced " when asked where you want Windows installed. Choosing this option will allow you to select the C drive as the only drive you want to format. Click on your "C" disk drive when Windows asks which partition you want to "change," or install.

Your computer will then begin formatting, or erasing, all the data currently existing on your C drive. Windows will notify you when the formatting procedure has finished. Re-install Windows 7 on your C drive. After your C drive has been formatted, you will be required to re-install Windows 7 to that partition. Click on "Next" after Windows has notified you that the formatting procedure has completed.

The Windows installation wizard will continue to walk you through the installation process. You will be prompted for your computer name if you are connected to a network, and for information such as your user name. Restore your saved files. After Windows has completed the installation process, you can insert your external hard drive or disc into the computer to restore your files back to the C drive.

Formatting removes all data from the drive for a clean install. Before formatting, you will need to back up your data to removable media, a second hard drive, or the cloud. Not Helpful 6 Helpful Jonathan Hickey. Yes, and it will also remove the entire Windows operating system, so I would not recommend doing this unless absolutely necessary.

Not Helpful 2 Helpful 9. If in case you forget to create a backup of your files, then we will show you how to recover those files. Windows 7, introduced many user-friendly features with its release. One of them was revamping the method to format the hard drive on the go by adding the freshly minted Disk Management utility.

It allowed the user to create partitions and format the hard drive with ease. Here in this section, we will discuss everything related to disk formatting on Windows 7. Disk formatting permits the user to remove the used storage from the storage device altogether and also helps in managing one or more new file systems. It can also be used to check for faulty tracks or defective sectors within a hard drive.

Formatting can be done on almost every kind of storage device like a Hard disk drive, USB flash drive, external hard drive, and an SSD. Before formatting any type of hard drive, we recommend that you should form a backup of all the crucial files present inside the storage device. The backup will allow you to open and use the data again after the formatting is finished.

There may be multiple factors behind formatting a storage drive, we will discuss some of those reasons in this section of the article. There are two types of formatting procedure that the computer may ask you to choose, which we will discuss briefly:. The quick formatting process is used to make the formatting process quick. This method does not check the drive for bad sectors, so you must only opt for this method if your purpose is just to clear some space in the HDD.

The major disadvantage of this method is that the data doesn't get completely wiped out so if your drive is still causing problems after the quick format, then you should perform a full format scan on your hard drive. A Full Format is recommended if you believe that your computer is infected with malware and viruses. This method checks the hard drive for bad sectors, and it usually takes longer to erase data than a quick format.

If your drive is misbehaving and performing sluggishly, then you must perform a full format on your HDD. It is a better option to make sure no issues exist with the drive. Click the Restart button to reboot your Windows 7 laptop and to start the factory reset process. Then your laptop will shut down and restart after a while. After that you will receive a new notification asking you to select a keyboard input method. Finally, you will be presented with three options again:.

You just select Restore operation system to factory default. Then click Next and again Next and at last Ok. Insert a blank CD into your laptop and click Create disc. Then select Close and OK.

Click Enter and Next , then select your windows system. Click Next and Command Prompt. So you need to do that in the WinPE environment. Insert the Windows installation CD into your laptop, and restart your computer.

Click Y to save the exit the setup. Apart from recovering formatted partition, it is also able to recover files from RAW and inaccessible volume as well as deleted partitions. The unregistered edition can scan formatted drive and preview lost data, so that you can make sure whether files can be recovered correctly prior to purchasing the licensed edition.

If you want to recover formatted C drive, you may need to perform the recovery process outside of Windows. On one hand, once system partition gets formatted, computer won't boot to Windows anymore. On the other hand, even if system works well, it is not secure to recover lost data from system drive when Windows is running. That's because Windows may generate writing action at any time, and damage lost data.

Step 1 Launch DiskGenius and locate the partition to be recovered. Right-click on the partition you want to recover data and choose Recover Lost Files , as follows:. Step 2 Select Complete Recovery and click Start button to search for lost data from selected drive. If you remember the file system type of the partition before it got formatted, then click Advanced Options button to select file system.

File preview can be done during or after scanning. Double-click a file and you can open it in preview window. The following screenshot shows the previewing of a JPG file.

By way of previewing files, you can find out what you need to recover and whether they can be recovered correctly. Step 4 Copy and save files you want to recover.

Select desired files and folders and right-click on them to choose Copy To. Formatting refers to the process of preparing a new partition or remove existing data on a hard drive or USB storage device. If the drive contains important data and it is the only copy of your data, you'll face data loss issue once formatting performed to the disk. A partition should be created and formatted first before you can store data on the device. Formatting is a very important step, which creates file system to get partition ready to store data.

As to formatting there are two levels of formatting we can execute:. Quick format : Windows performs quick format by default. As the name suggest the formatting process is very quick. By way of quick formatting, you can change file system type as well as remove data off the entire partition.