by Whether you are changing your laptop or getting rid of all the temporary data in your laptop, deleting it directly by pressing Shift + Delete might seem adequate. However, you are just deleting all the visible files of a particular drive. Most people think that deleting a file will get rid of everything, but in reality, the data is restorable with a little effort of tools.
Many people delete everything in their laptop while selling it to someone else and they end up forgetting that, they are not completely erasing all the files. The best option in such a scenario is to completely format each drive to make every file hard to restore. Using encryptions on a drive can make it much more difficult for an individual to restore any other file which was there.
The primary question which pops into everyone’s mind is, why should you format a laptop and is it safe? To answer these questions, it would be an adequate choice to learn about the importance of formatting a drive or patrician.
So far, there are three easy methods, which can help you get rid of every file from your laptop in a particular drive. The methods are as follow.
Method 1 – The Common Method from Windows
If you are willing to format a storage patrician of your window, then it would be an easy method. Follow the steps –
- Turn on your laptop and refresh for a couple of times. After a couple of seconds, you are good to go.
- Press the window button and search ‘This PC’. Click on it, and then you can find all the connected drives.
- In case, you have only a single drive then, it might have some patrician. You can format any drive except the system drive.
- Choose the driving example, Local Disc D, or it might have any other name. Right-click on it and choose the format button.
- You will be given a bunch of options to format. In Microsoft Windows 10, you only get NTFS as the default type.
- Tap on the Volume Label column and choose any name of desire, or you can keep it empty as before.
- There is an option bellowed which says ‘Quick Format,’ and if you tick it, the drive will take less time in the format.
- Press the Format button and wait for a few seconds to let the process complete. Once everything is done, you can close this window and open the drive.
The only difference between a quick format vs a complete format is speed and effective cleaning. Choosing a quick format will get rid of all the issues and it will be taking less than few seconds. On the other hand, if you are going with the complete format, it will take time and remove all the files effectively so the data won’t be recoverable from the drive.
Method 2 – From Disk Management Section
In case, you are having any problem with the regular method, going with the advanced option might seem highly adequate in this situation. To format a particular drive, follow the steps –
- Press the window button and search ‘This PC’ and let it load up. Right Click on This PC option and choose the Manage button.
- Now the system settings will open and it will display you all the basic information regarding the drives and more.
- Choose Disc Management from the left column. It will take a few seconds in loading up the drives.
- Now, you can find drives labelled with alphabets. Choose the drive you want to format and right-click on it.
- Choose the Format option and there will be almost similar steps to the previous one. You can only format in NTFS format as FAT32 and other formats are not supported by windows drives.
- Name the ‘Volume Label’ and Tick ‘Perform a Quick Format’ to get started. Once you click on the format button, everything in this drive will be erased.
- However, you can find one more column to tick which says ‘Enable File and Folder Compression’.
- If you tick this column, all the new data that you will transfer to this drive will be compressed to save you some storage.
- Well, it will reduce the data transfer speed and it might affect the overall performance, but for storage purposes, it is one of the best alternatives.
After completing all the steps, you can quickly format a drive or patrician.
Method 3 – Deleting and Creating A New Drive
In the same Disk management option, you can find many other features to eradicate chances of restoring the data. The method is as follow –
- In the disc management section, right-click on the drive that you want to format.
- Click on “Delete patrician” and you will get a Confirmation sign this time.
- After clicking on this option, right-click on unallocated storage and tap create drive.
- Enter the storage drive capacity and create.
Follow the first step after this thing to the new drive and you have completely reduced the chances of recovering the media from this drive.
Why To Format?
There are three main reasons, which can make you format a laptop completely even though the data won’t be restorable.
- If you have sensitive or personal data that you don’t want to get into someone’s hand while selling the laptop to someone. As you delete every file individually, it will take days to completely delete all the files.
- Viruses and malware can make your laptop slow. If you are dealing with the same issue, the format is an effective solution to reduce the chances of any viruses or malware after a fresh install of an operating system.
- For a corporate or bank laptop device, it is highly necessary to take all safety precautions. If you have personal data inside a laptop and want to remove it permanently, it is crucial to format it.
These are some of the major reasons that might make you format a patrician or drive for safety reasons.
