Format Hard drive

netvista

Hi Guys

Got a new lap top and it looks like one of the drives are not set up to use yet. Do i just need to go into disk management and click on format to be able to use the drive as normal?

thanks

InquiringMind

It would be unusual for a new laptop to arrive with unpartitioned disk space. It may be a recovery partition, I wouldn't format it until your sure.

netvista

how do i know if it's ok. At the moment in disk managemnet it shows it as DATA healthy (primary partition) but in My Computer while the other drives are showing this is not. Is there something else i should do to start accessing it in My computer

coldfire1x

Whats the size of the drive you are looking to format?

InquiringMind

If it's showing up like you said in Disk Management it is most likely a recovery partition and not free space. It is not shown in Windows Explorer as there is no drive letter assigned to it as it is not meant to be used. It more than likely contains your copy of windows, drivers, preinstalled software, etc. Deleting it probably won't affect the running of the pc but will mean if you ever have to reinstall windows you'll need a windows cd/dvd, you'll have to find the drivers yourself and you'll lose your preinstalled software (although this may be on a separate cd/dvd.

Hope this helps

netvista

Thanks guys for the answers but here's some more info for you.
It's a 500gb hard drive. 250gb is showing up on 'My computer' but not the other 250gb. When i check Disk management the other 250gb is there but it only says 'Data 232GB Healthy (Primary Partition)'.

When i right click it shows the following

Mark partition as Active
Change drive letters and path
Format

As i'm not a techie i don't know what i should do to be able to use it however, someone told me once i need to format the disk hence the original question.

iUseVi

netvista wrote: »

Ok it's a 500gb hard drive. 250gb is showing up on 'My computer' but not the other 250gb. When i check Disk management the other 250gb is there but it only says 'Data 232GB Healthy (Primary Partition)'.

When i right click it shows the following

Mark partition as Active
Change drive letters and path
Format

As i'm not a techie i don't know what i should do to be able to use it however, someone told me once i need to format the disk hence the question.

If it's showing as healthy you shouldn't have to format it. You could right click it and assign a drive letter, but I would advice against that if you don't know what the drive contains.

netvista

Thanks iuse. the drive contains nothing other than free space so i'll assign a drive letter to it.