Formatting External Hard Drive Using Disk Management On Windows 11

Summary#

Decided to provide notes on some other aspects of system administration that not everyone knows how to do. But, everyone definately can do on their Windows workstations. I move back and forth between Linux and Windows machines frequently with flash drives and don’t always eject the drive safely. I either use these flash drives for one off cases or as installation media for various operating systems.

Sometimes with this constant switching back and forth. I run into situations where the external media gets corrupted somehow. When this happens I need to fix it by starting off from scratch on the external media. One method; on Windows, I use is PowerShell to wipe and reformat the volumes on the disk. Another method is a mixture of both PowerShell and the Disk Management tool. (Sometimes I like a visual)

Granted, I do see the need to just know how to format a hard drive using Disk Management. So that is what this note really provides. A simple why to create a new volume on an external hard drive. Then it will provide steps on how to format that disk to exFAT. But, also explains the different options available with their pros and cons.

Opening Disk Management#

First order of business is opening Disk Managment. This can be done from the Quick Access Menu by either using the shortcut Win+X or by right-clicking the Windows or Start Menu button in the taskbar.

Once that’s finished. We should see the following. We’ll want to left-click on the Disk Management option.

This is called Disk Managment. This is where we can manage hard drives, volumes, disk partitions, etc on Windows computers. We can create new volumes, format volumes, delete volumes, etc. from this menu. This is the gist of what we can do with Disk Management. Although there are a few more things we can do. That should sum up some of the basics.

What we’ll focus on here is Disk 1. A flash drive I recently wiped for the purpose of writting out these notes. As you can see this is a 32 GB removable or flash drive media and all of the space on it is unallocated. This means the space isn’t being utilized. A volume can be created and formatted for use.

The next steps will go into creating a new volume so it can be formatted for future use.

Create A New Volume#

Creating a new volume is pretty simple. We’ll be going through the New Simple Volume Wizard to complete this task. But, first we need to be able to open it on the drive of our choosing.

In my case. I right-click Disk 1 and then left-click New Simple Volume... to open the New Simple Volume Wizard.

The following window should pop up showing the initial screen of the New Simple Volume Wizard. To continue to the next step we’ll left-click Next. There shouldn’t be anything actionable at this screen apart from a little reading if you so choose.

This next step is dependent on how you expect to setup this drive. You can create multiple volumes by going through the process until the disk fills up with volumes. Though that will require some math on your part. If you’d wish to continue with this option and get stuck. I can answer questions by contacting me via the Contact page. As a rule of thumb. Don’t try to exceed the maximum space. If you wish to only use half of your disk and expand later. Use an online calculator or type out your desired size in the Simple volume size in MB box. There are hard drive calculators that can assist with this.

Now that’s out of the way. I will be using the full 29,602 MB (29 GB) availble because this is a flash drive meant for various needs. Once I’m satesfied with the number. I click the Next button to move on.

The next screen will allow me to set a drive letter. I will shy away from formatting the disk for now because I’ll get to formatting this in exFAT in the next section. The D option was the default. I’m not worried about that drive being taken up by another shared drive or disk. I click the Next button to move on.

As said before. I will shy away from formatting the volume by choosing the Do not format this volume option. I’ve found that with flash drives it doesn’t format the volume anyway. It will output in a RAW format when all is said and done. I click the Next button to move on.

The New Single Volume Wizard will provide a screen showing a summary of everything it will do to the volume on the drive. If you’re satesfied with the summary. Click Finish.

Once completed. We’ll should see our new volume as a RAW formatted disk on Disk 1.

Should be able to move on to the next section of this article where we format the newly created volume.

Formatting The New Volume#

I didn’t format the drive. The exFAT option isn’t available when creating a new volume. So I created a volume without formatting the flash drive initially. I think it’s meant for formatting internal disks and not removable media anyway.

To move on and format the flash drive. I right click the volume on Disk 1 and then I click the Format... option in the list of options.

I’m going to circle back to this note a little and talk about how the different file system options can be used. There are different use cases for these.

NTFS is the default file system for Windows volumes. These can be easily read by the Windows operating system and Windows can utilize features like Bitlocker to encrypt the drive. There are no practicle transfer limits and support file sizes up to 16 exbibytes (EiB) theoretically or 8 pebibytes (PB) and volume sizes up to 8 pepbibytes (PB).

FAT32 although I avoid it in most instances. There are times I don’t have any other choice. Coupled with an MBR partition table and FAT32 there are some devices (e.g. firewalls, switches, industrial sewing machines, etc) that will only accept this format. There is a 4 gigabyte (GB) file size limit. But, the maximum volume/partition size is 8 terabytes (TB). So take what you wish from that.

exFAT was introduced in 2006 and made available in 2019. It is generally what I will format flash drives and external hard drives to these days because it doesn’t have limitations I’ve reached. The max volume size is 128 PB with a recomended volume size limit of 512 TB. It also doesn’t have the 4 GB file limit that FAT32 has. So if I can format a flash drive or other external media I will normally format it to exFAT. Plus Linux seems to do just fine supporting it.

To move on. I chose exFAT for the file system on this volume. But, choose what will suite your needs. Once you’re satesfied with the Volume label and if you’re OK with using quick format. Click the OK button.

A warning will pop up telling you that this will overwrite your volume. One of those double-check moments is a good idea. You never know. There may be data on the disk that you didn’t know you needed. If everything is good. Go ahead and click OK.

Once this is complete. We should be back at Disk Management. It will show us the freshly formatted drive as the file system you chose. In my case it’s exFAT. It will also show the volume name, size, and health status of the partitions on the disk.

Conclusion#

I went on a little bit of a rant in the summary. But, this note is intended to show others how to access Windows Disk Management, create a new volume on a hard drive/flash drive, and format that hard drive/flash drive.

If anyone has any questions related to this note. Please let me know. I should be available via the Contact page. I hope everyone has a well deserved and alert free weekend!