External Hard Drive Reviews And Comparison

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External Hard Drive Reviews

Comprehensive side-by-side comparison of the latest external hard drives. Compare by list price, released date, capacity, interface, dimension, weight and warranty.

In-depth reviews of popular brands and models. Read our informative buyer's guide and checklist before buying your external hard drive.

 

Format Hard Drive

How To Format Hard Drive Safely?

Is your computer slow, sluggish, frequently crashing and sending error message reports? If you are tired of these irksome problems, why not learn how to format hard drive so as to speed things up? Maybe some people will see it as a tedious and boring task, but if you are a hands-on kind of person you can certainly give it a try. Just think of the various benefits it can bring to you when you experience great results on your computer's performance.

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Do A Thorough Check First

Make sure you have investigated all other possible reasons for the sluggishness of your computer because formatting your hard drive might not always be necessary. Getting a thorough check done will help you pinpoint the exact cause of the problem.

The first thing to do will be to remove all viruses, if any, that are on your computer as this is a frequent cause of the issue. Then remove any spyware that you have to see if this is the problem. Check all the current programs running on your computer and how much space they are using. If you have too many live applications that use up a lot of memory and space, these could be the root of the problem.

If after carrying out thorough checks and you are still faced with the computer performance issue, then it's time you learn how to format hard drive safely and correctly.

What To Expect

Here's a quick look at some of the steps you can expect to go through when you format your hard drive.

First of all, backup and save any data that you want to keep. All data will be wiped out and your hard drive will be taken back to its original state when originally purchased. If you are wondering whether it's possible to format hard drive whilst keeping certain applications, unfortunately the answer is that it's not possible at all.

Then take a note of all the applications on your computer so you know what you had before you format hard drive. This is just in case you want to reinstall and don't have original driver discs or locations to download.

Now your computer is ready to format hard drive. Shut down your computer and boot from your original installation CD; you can do this via the Boot screen that will appear before your desktop application begins to run. You are about to restart the Windows installation process thus taking everything on the computer back to basic settings.

You will be prompted to delete the Windows partition; this is where your current operating system and all other information you had gathered whilst using your computer are stored. This can take some time depending on the size of your hard drive and the amount of items stored here. Once this is completely deleted you can now create a new partition where your new operating system will run from.

You can then run your desktop software installation. Once this is complete you can reinstall any other drivers you want on your computer, for example any music applications or Bluetooth adapters. It is advisable to update any drivers that you have now installed. Remember, new applications are constantly being released and you may have an older version if this is quite an old computer. Check out the company websites for the updates on these.

While the process may look easy to some, yet others will find learning how to format hard drive quite a challenge. As with most things whenever you are in doubt, the best thing to do is to consult some IT experts regarding this.

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