How do I format and partition my new external hard disk?

I have a new 500GB external USB hard drive and would like to format and partition it. How do I do that?

Well, to begin with, you may not need to. Most come pre-formatted as a single partition.

But if it didn't, or if you don't like the default setup, changing it is easy. And of course you'll
want to do this before you load that disk up with data.

As I said, most external hard drives come ready to use. Just plug 'em in, let Windows discover it,
and *poof* there's another drive on your system ready to use.

Most will come pre-configured as a single unlabelled partition using the FAT32 filesystem.

If that's what you have, and if that's what you want, you can stop reading now, since you're done.
You need do nothing more.

"... most external hard drives come ready to use."

If you want to change what you have, the tools you need to do so are already right there in
Windows.

Start by right clicking on My Computer and then clicking on Manage. In the resulting
application window, click on Disk Management in the left hand pane. You should see
something similar to this:
At the top you'll see all the logical disks on your system listed alphabetically by label by default.
Below that you'll see a graphical representation of all the physical disk drives known to your
system. If a physical drive has more than one partition those partitions will be shown together on
the single physical drive.

In this example, my drive "E:" is an external USB drive. It happens to be my backup drive where
nightly backups are stored.

Remove the Existing Partition

Let's assume for a moment that I'm unhappy with the current configuration of the partitions on
my external drive and want to change it. My first step would be to remove the existing partition.

You need to right click on the drive in the lower pane, and you should see this menu:
 Important: the next step will delete everything on the drive. Everything. Make sure this
is what you want before proceeding.

Click on Delete Partition

The representation of the drive should change from "Healthy" to "Unallocated".

Partition The Drive

Right click on the drive again, and the option that was once "Delete Partition" is now "New
Partition". Click on that to set up your new partition.

You'll then be asked to select "Primary" or "Extended" partition. Primary is sufficient unless you
plan to put more than 4 partitions on this hard disk. You'll then also be asked how much of the
space to allocate for the new partition you're creating.

Typically, I recommend simply allocating the entire space to a single partition. You can, if you
like, allocate less than the maximum space to the partition you're creating now so that you have
room for additional partitions on the same hard disk. Remember that each partition, once
formatted, will appear as its own logical disk (C:, D:, E: and so on.)

You'll then be asked about formatting, which I'll cover below.

Once you've formatted the new partition, it'll appear as "Healthy", and any leftover space will
continue to display "Unallocated". You can then repeat this partitioning process on that
unallocated space until your entire drive has been allocated.

Format Your Drive

Assuming that partitioning has been performed above, or you don't want to change the
partitioning of your drive, the next thing to change would be the format of the drive.
 Important: formatting a drive will delete everything on the drive. Everything. Make
sure this is what you want before proceeding.

Right click on the drive that you wish to format, click on the Format item, press OK on the dire
warning, and you'll get a dialog similar to this:

Let's look at each of those options:

 Volume Label - is the name that will appear when the logical disk is displayed in
Windows Explorer, in File selection dialog boxes and in other situations. It's a convenient
way to identify disks by name rather than only by letter. The label is an attribute of the
drive, so particularly on removable drives the label stays the same no matter what
machine you plug it into, or what drive letter it gets assigned.
 File System - I recommend NTFS unless the drive is going to be used by older versions
of Windows, or by non-Windows systems. There's debate as to whether NTFS is faster (I
think it is), but it also supports additional security features like file permissions, and can
typically make more efficient use of larger disks.
 Allocation unit size - can be left at "Default".
 Perform a Quick format - for the type of format we're doing here, I actually recommend
leaving this unchecked. A quick format only writes the bare minimum of information to
establish the disk's new configuration. If the disk has been in use for a while, that's fine
and is what I typically recommend. However, when going through the effort of
formatting a new disk I suggest using this opportunity to have the format process actually
write the entire drive. It may take a while.
 Enable file and folder compression - I have mixed feelings about this. The overhead of
compressing and decompressing files is no longer significant with today's processor
speeds. Howeve,r I have concerns about data recovery if the disk ever experiences an
issue. My concerns may not be valid, but ultimately, I never run with compression on any
 of my hard disks, preferring instead to compress the individual files as appropriate
instead. So many file formats, like most audio and video files, are already compressed
that the compression offered by the file system is often negligible. I leave this unchecked.

That's it. Press OK and after a period of time you'll have a formatted, ready-to-use disk.

A Word on Disk Partitioning Utilities

As you've seen, the process we used above to adjust the existing partitions on the hard disk
involve deleting the entire contents of the disk, changing the partition structure, and then placing
the disk back into service.

It may not have to be that way.

There are third party utilities such as Partition Magic or Acronis Disk Director that will allow
you to resize partitions without first erasing the disk. Of course I still recommend a full backup
of the disk you're about to modify first, but these can be useful utilities.

Here's why I'm not suggesting them: how often do you really repartition a disk?

In my mind it's much more common to do it once, and then leave the configuration alone. A
change is typically so infrequent that the utilities - however good they are - often aren't worth the
effort.

However, that's obviously a decision you can make on your own, since it's a classic time / money
tradeoff.

But particularly for a new disk just being placed into service, there's no need for advanced
management tools. Once it's empty, and while it's empty, it's a perfect time to perform any
partitioning or formatting or the like using Windows own built-in tools.

http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_format_and_partition_my_new_external_hard_disk.html