When the operating system is running, full formatting of the hard drive is impossible. The fact is that the operating system will not allow you to erase the partition on which it is installed. Therefore, in this article we will tell you about several ways to format a hard drive without using an operating system.

Using Windows bootable media

Method 1 – Using the Command Line

Step 1.
To boot from the installation media, you need to restart the computer and open the BIOS shell (depending on the motherboard, these can be the “DEL”, “F2”, “Ctrl+F2”, “F8”, “F12”, “Esc” keys) ).

Step 2.
After this, the BIOS shell will launch, in which you need to go to the “Boot” tab (control the arrows on the keyboard).

Step 3.
Open the "Boot Device Priority" menu.

Step 4.
As the first bootable media, select either a floppy drive or a USB port that will have the name of your flash drive. The disk drive is selected if you have a CD with a recorded image, USB is selected if you have a bootable flash drive.

Step 5.
After this, you need to save the changes and exit the program shell. You can do this by pressing the “F10” key or go to the “Exit” menu and click “save & exit”. After this, the PC will automatically reboot and you will see a message asking you to press an arbitrary key to continue booting from the media (this message does not appear when booting from a flash drive), to continue press an arbitrary key, for example, spacebar or Enter.

Step 6.
Next, the process of copying the Windows installation files will follow and the installation wizard will start. When the wizard starts (the language selection window appears), press the keyboard shortcut “Shift+F10”, which will launch the command line. If you are using an installation disk with Windows 8, then you need to start the command line as follows:

• Select your system language.
• Go to the Diagnostics menu.
• Open the “Additional Features” sub-item.
• Launch Command Prompt.

"wmic logicaldisk get deviceid, volumename, size, description."

After entering the command, press Enter. The console will display available information about the partitions (drive letter, size and description).

Step 8
To perform formatting, enter the following format command:

"format /FS: [file system type] [drive letter]: /q"

For example:

"format /FS:NTFS C: /q" - quick formatting in the NTFS file system

Press Enter. The process of formatting the selected partition will begin.

Method 2 - Using Windows Setup

Step 1.
After the language selection window appears, select the Russian language and click “Next”. We start the installation by clicking the corresponding “Install” button.

Step 2.
Then you need to choose which type of installation to use: “Update” or “Full installation”. In our case, the second point is necessary.

Step 3.
In the next window you will be asked to select the partition in which the new OS will be written. Select the partition you want to format and click Disk Setup. The Disk Control Panel will appear, where you can format the partitions, delete them, and re-partition them.

Note: When starting from bootable media, the drive letters will most likely be missing, so make sure you are formatting the correct drive. It is best to remember the sizes of each partition in advance, since you can use them to navigate which disk is which.

Step 4.
To start formatting the partition, click “Format”.

After this, the disk will be formatted.

Using third party boot utilities

Method 3 – Using Third Party Boot Utilities

Note: In addition to this utility, there is also a third-party software package called “Hiren`s Boot CD”. In its composition you will find many utilities for working with disks and more. It is also accompanied by detailed documentation.