You may want to format the SSD in order to free up the storage or install an operating system. Formatting allows users to revert the SSD to a clean state and reconfigure other drive parameters, such as the File system.
Many think that formatting a drive will permanently delete all the data stored in it. However, it is possible to recover and access those data, especially when Quick Format is performed. Therefore, it is a good idea to perform a Full Format when selling off an old drive.
What Does Formatting Do to Your SSD?
The actual full format process rewrites the cells in the SSD with 0s. It also scans for the bad sectors in the drive and fixes them. This is the reason a full format takes a long time.
If you Quick Format your SSD, it only marks the storage space on your SSD as available without actually deleting the files in it. So it is easier to recover your data on SSD even after a quick format. Also, the Quick Format process takes significantly lesser time than a Full format.
During the Formatting process, you can also choose the File system for your SSDs. Here’re some common file systems on Windows.
Precautions Before Formatting an SSD
Here are a few precautionary measures before we move into the various methods of formatting an SSD.
Now, let’s move on to some of the methods you’re able to use to format an SSD from your Windows device.
Using Windows Installation Media
On a live Windows environment, it is not possible to format an entire SSD that is also working as a boot drive. In such a case, you may use a Windows installation media to format all of the drive’s content.
In this, we format the SSD by going through the Windows installation process. While doing so, we will only format the drive and skip the Windows installation process.
From File Explorer
If you have an external SSD drive or a drive partition that you want to format, File explorer gives a convenient option to do just that. However, formatting the entire system disk will not be possible through this method.
From the Disk Management Utility
This method is ideal for formatting the drives that haven’t been assigned any drive letter and thus aren’t shown in the file explorer.
If you have a newly installed additional SSD drive, you won’t be able to access it unless you initialize and allocate the drive.
However, if the SSD is already allocated and you want to format it, here’s how you can do it from the Disk Management Utility.
Using Command Prompt
You can also format the SSD using the command line interface. If there’s just a single partition on the drive, you may use theformatcommand directly to format the desired drive.
For instance, if you’re formatting an SSD with the drive letterD:, you may typeformat D:, to completely format the drive. However, using this command line with thediskpartwill give you the flexibility to choose an entire drive or a partition to format.
