Formatting Disks

You have to format a disk before you can put anything on it. The Disk Management wizards that assist you in creating simple, spanned, or striped volumes all include a formatting step. (It’s assumed that you want to format the new volume so that you can actually do something with it—although the step is optional). You can also format a volume in Disk Management by right-clicking its rectangle in the graphical display (the lower pane) and choosing Format from the shortcut menu. (You cannot format the active, boot, or system partition, however.) Outside of Disk Management, you can format a volume in Windows Explorer (right-click, choose Format, and reply to the UAC prompt) or from the command prompt (use the Format command; type ...

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