How to Format a Hard Drive from BIOS - video guide included

Can I format hard drive from BIOS settings? Well, BIOS settings have no ability to format any disk drive, however you can boot your computer from bootable CD, DVD or USB external drive by changing BIOS settings and then get hard drive formatted there.

How to Format Hard Drive with BIOS?

Video - how to format disk in BIOS

Step1. When booting your computer, please press F2, F1, F8 or Del key to enter BIOS settings.

Step2. Select the "Advanced BIOS Features" by pressing the arrow keys on the keyboard of your computer and then set the first boot device as the USB drive or CD, DVD.

Step3. After changing the BIOS settings, you can exit the screen and reboot your computer. Insert the bootable USB or CD/DVD, and your computer will boot from USB or CD, DVD.

Step4. After booting computer, you can go ahead to format the hard drive.

Or you may format the drive in BIOS using cmd

1. Insert bootable CD/DVD >  Reboot > Press F2/F8/Delete bottom to go into BIOS

2. Define boot order: make boot form CD/DVD as the first option > Save > Exit

3. Reboot > click Use recovery tools that can help fix problems starting Windows when you disc loaded> Windows installation > Command Prompt

BIOS Command Prompt

4.Type:format c: /fs: ntfs

BIOS Command Prompt format partition

Alternative Option: Format Hard Drive with Free Disk Partition Freeware: Partition Resizer

If you want to format your disk, here is a freeware named Partition Resizer that can let you format your hard disk directly on a working PC. It also has a bootable edition that you can use its bootable iso and burn it onto dvd/cd/usb to get the disk formatted.

Make Bootable Format Tool with Freeware Partition Resizer

Step 1: Download the freeware

Step 2: Open the freeware and then click 'Bootable Media'

Step 3: Set a path for saving the iso file of Partition Resizer to make a bootable one

Step 4: Wait and see the iso file is finished and saved to the path you specified.

And then you may use the Windows built-in iso burnning function or third party free tool to burn the iso file to CD/DVD/USB and then format the disk under bootable mode.

How to format a hard disk using CMD

Here are some cmd that you may use for formatting a drive in computer.

Firstly, launch cmd by pressing Win icon +R on the keyboard.

And then, type the following cmd to get disk formatted.

• Type 'diskpart'
• Type 'list disk'
• Type 'select disk *'
• Type 'list volume'
• Type 'format fs=ntfs label=E quick' or 'format fs=fat32 label=E quick' or you may format it to any file system you want it to be. (You may replace E with the one you want to format)
• Type 'exit' once the formatting was finished.

Or you may try the following steps too.

Why Need To Format Hard Disk from BIOS Settings?

Many people look for the way to format hard disk from BIOS settings because of following reasons:

1. They want to format C drive (system partition). If booting computer from hard disk, it is unable to format C drive because operating system is installed on this drive.

2. There is something wrong with the bootable partition, in which situation PC cannot boot from the hard disk. Therefore, they want to enter BISO settings to change BIOS settings to boot computer from bootable CD or USB drive.

Formatted Hard Drive Recovery

Please free download following free format recovery software if you mistakenly formatted hard drive.

iCare Data Recovery Free – 100% freeware for hard drive recovery.

Last updated on Nov 28, 2023

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Resource

• How to enter bios (resource provided by HP)
• 3 ways of enter bios (by wikihow)

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