Windows 10: How to Format and Partition a New External Drive in Windows 10

Recently, I picked a new external drive with 4TBs of storage for under 100 dollars. This would probably be my 8th or 9th drive I have bought since I started using them back in the mid 2000's. They just keep getting bigger and bigger and with good reason. As much as we benefit from always on availability of on Cloud storage providers such as OneDrive, some data due to size constraints or personal security or even convenience due to limited bandwidth are best served by backing up to an external drive. For years, Windows has included some form of a backup solution, whether it was early utilities

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Format an external Drive.

Hello Roger,

Thank you for posting your concern in Microsoft Community and welcome to the Windows 10 Family.

I would suggest you to follow the below steps to format the drive you are referring to.

• Right Click on Start menu and select Open Computer Management.
  
• 
  In the left pane, under Storage, click Disk Management.
  
• 
  Right-click the volume that you want to format, and then click Format.
  
• 
  To format the volume with the default settings, in the Format dialog box, click
  OK, and then click OK again.
  

Note: You cannot format a disk or partition that is currently in use, including the partition that contains Windows.

Hope it helps.

Thank you.

 

Formatting External hard drive.

1. Launch the Disk Manager with diskmgmt.msc
2. Use right-clicks to delete all partitions on the external disk
3. Create one or several new partitions
4. Format them

 

Windows 10 - formatting external drives to FAT16/32

Hello Brian, try this:

Format USB flash drive or external hard drive into FAT32 using CMD command line

A simple and free way to format your flash drive or external hard drive to FAT32 in brand new Windows 10 is using CMD command line, a built-in FAT32 format tool which enables you to format/create/delete/extend/shrink partition without rebooting the system.
If you want to use this tool to format the flash drive or external hard drive to FAT32, please try the following steps:

1. Open a command window by directly typing CDM in Windows 10 "Search the web and Windows" box. Windows 10 will show you the best match Command Prompt.

2. Type the command "format /FS:FAT32 H:" at the prompt. H is the drive letter of your USB or external hard drive in Windows 10. If it's not for your case, replace the drive letter H with your own letter.

3. Hit Enter. Windows 10 will go ahead and begin formatting the USB flash drive or external hard drive into FAT32.

From:
https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/format-...