To format a hard drive before you start using it in Windows, use the Disk Management utility; on a Mac, use Disk Utility.

When you run the format command in Command Prompt to format a drive on your Windows 11 or Windows 10 computer, the format operation may fail or be unable to complete and output the message Bad sectors ...

You can format an external drive quickly and easily in Windows, without the need of any third-party tools. But before you format your USB drive, you need to consider which file system to use. File ...