\n<\/strong><\/p>\n
This tip is for Windows 10 and Windows 11<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n If you have an external hard drive or a USB flash drive that contains information you don\u2019t need anymore, you can format it. Formatting a drive wipes out all the data on the drive and makes all the space on those drives available to use \u2013 just as if it were a new drive.<\/span><\/p>\n 1.)\u00a0 \u00a0Open File Explorer (Windows key + E)\u00a0 and under \u201cThis PC\u201d or \u201cComputer\u201d find the drive you want to format, right-click it, and choose \u201cFormat\u201d from the menu.<\/span><\/p>\n 2.) After you click \u201cFormat\u201d you\u2019ll see a dialog like the one in the screenshot below.\u00a0 Unless you\u2019re an advanced user and know what you\u2019re doing, it\u2019s best to leave the default settings under\u00a0 \u201cFile System (NTFS\u2026), \u201cAllocation unit size 4096 bytes\u201d and \u201cQuick Format\u201d as they are. If you choose to do so,\u00a0 you can change the drive name to anything you want.<\/span><\/p>\n 3.) Click \u201cStart\u201d to start the format. A Quick Format can take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or two depending on the size of the drive.<\/span><\/p>\n Formatting is a great way to repurpose old flash drives or external drives containing out-of-date backups or data you no longer need.<\/span><\/p>\n And remember\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n NEVER<\/strong> format a drive that contains any data that you need.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Formatting Drives: A Tutorial This tip is for Windows 10 and Windows 11 If you have an external hard drive or a USB flash drive that contains information you don\u2019t need anymore, you can format it. Formatting a drive wipes out all the data on the drive and makes all the space on those drives available to\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4486,4383,3948,4299,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28926"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28928,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28926\/revisions\/28928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Format](\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2022\/format0.png\")
<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Format](\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2022\/format1.png\")
<\/span><\/p>\n