Formatting disks and converting their file system in Windows Vista:
Format a disk so that Windows can use it You must format a disk before Windows can use it.
Choose Start Computer, right-click the disk, and then choose the Format command from the
context menu.
Starting Disk Management
Take the following steps to start Disk Management:
1. Choose Start Control Panel. Windows displays Control Panel.
2. In Control Panel Home view, click the System and Maintenance link. Windows displays the
System and Maintenance window.
3. In the Administrative Tools list, click the Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions link, and
then authenticate yourself to User Account Control. Windows displays the Disk Management
window
Disk Management
is Windows’ tool for
creating and deleting
disk partitions. Disk
Management shows
local hard disks,
removable disks,
and optical disks.
Disk Management window lists the volumes
currently defined on the system, giving the following information about each volume:
Creating a Volume
If you have free space available, you can create a volume in it, as in the following example. The
options available to you depend on your disk configuration.
1. Right-click the free space and choose New Simple Volume from the context menu. Disk
Management starts the New Simple Volume Wizard, which displays its Welcome page.
2. Click the Next button. The wizard displays the Specify Volume Size page.
3. In the Simple Volume Size in MB text box, enter the size of volume you want to create. The
wizard suggests using all the space available, which you may not want to do. The readout
above the text box shows the minimum and maximum sizes possible.
4. Click the Next button. The wizard displays the Assign Drive Letter or Path page.
5. Leave the Assign the Following Drive Letter option button selected and specify the letter in
the drop-down list.
* Instead of assigning a drive letter, you can select the Mount in the Following Empty
NTFS Folder option button and specify the folder in the text box. See the next sidebar for
a discussion of this option.
* Instead of doing either of the above, you can avoid assigning a drive letter or path by
selecting the Do Not Assign a Drive Letter or Drive Path option button. The only reason
to do this is if you planning to assign letters (or paths) later after creating other partitions. To access the partition through the Windows interface (for example, from Explorer
or from an application), you'll need to assign a drive letter or path to it sooner or later.
and it may as well be sooner.
6. Click the Next button. The wizard displays the Format Partition page.
7. Leave the Format This Volume with the Following Settings option button selected and
choose settings:
* Choose the file system (preferably NTFS, but FAT32 or FAT if necessary) in the File
System drop-down list.
* Leave the Allocation Unit Size drop-down list set to Default unless you've got a very
good reason to change it.
* Type the label for the volume in the Volume Label text box. (The wizard suggests New
Volume, but you should be able to come up with something more descriptive. You can
use up to 20 characters for the label on an NTFS volume and 11 characters for that on a
FAT or FAT32 volume.)
* Select the Perform a Quick Format check box if you've checked the disk for errors
recently and found none. If not, it's better to perform a full format, including the check
for errors.
* Select the Enable File and Folder Compression check box if you want to use compression
on the volume. Compression lets you pack more files onto the volume (assuming that
the files aren't already fully compressed) but degrades performance a little.
8. Click the Next button. The wizard displays the Completing the New Simple Volume Wizard
page, which summarizes the choices you've made.
9. Click the Finish button. The wizard closes, creates the volume, formats it, and displays an
Explorer window showing the volume's contents (nothing).
