Press the "D" key on your keyboard and then press the "L" key to confirm your decision to delete the operating system. Depending on the amount of data on the hard drive, the deletion process could take up to 30 minutes to complete.
Bottom line: You don't have to simply “junk” your perfectly fine computer just because it doesn't run as fast as it used to or even because Microsoft has decided to abandon your version of Windows. You have an excellent alternative to consider: Ditch your PC's Windows installation and replace it with Linux!
Put some thought into whether you want to completely wipe out Windows, or dual-boot with both Windows and Ubuntu. The installation you're about to do will give you full control to completely erase your hard drive, or be very specific about partitions and where to put Ubuntu.
Here are the steps to follow for reinstalling Ubuntu.
- Step 1: Create a live USB. First, download Ubuntu from its website. You can download whichever Ubuntu version you want to use. Download Ubuntu.
- Step 2: Reinstall Ubuntu. Once you have got the live USB of Ubuntu, plugin the USB. Reboot your system.
You cannot perform a reinstallation of Ubuntu from an existing installation.
- Use Ubuntu live disk to boot up.
- Select Install Ubuntu on hard disk.
- Keep on following the wizard.
- Select the Erase Ubuntu and reinstall option (the third option in the image).
Precautions
- Never type sudo rm -R / or sudo rm -r / as it deletes all the data in the root directory and will delete the data of all the mounted volumes until you want to wipe of everything from your system.
- sudo rm -f /* also does blunders with your system.
Format Linux USB Drive to recover full disk space in Windows 10
- Step 1: Run Administrator Command Prompt. On Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 search for command and simply right-click Command Prompt shortcut from the search results and select Run as administrator .
- Step 2: Use diskpart to clean disk.
- Step 3: Re-partition and format.
Follow the steps below to format a drive:
- STEP 1: Open Command Prompt As Administrator. Opening the command prompt.
- STEP 2: Use Diskpart. Using diskpart.
- STEP 3: Type List Disk.
- STEP 4: Select the Drive to Format.
- STEP 5: Clean the Disk.
- STEP 6: Create Partition Primary.
- STEP 7: Format the Drive.
- STEP 8: Assign a Drive Letter.
Method 1.Disk Management
- Right click “My Computer/This PC” on the desktop, select “Manage”>“Storage”> “Disk Management” to open Disk Management.
- Right click on the external hard drive to format and click on “Format…”in the drop-down menu.
- Select “NTFS” in the “File system” box and then tick “Perform a quick format”.
How to Format a Hard Drive for Windows 10
- Connect your external hard drive to a Windows computer.
- Right-click on the external hard drive and click Format.
- Choose a format under File System.
- Check the Quick Format box, and click Start.
- Click OK when the Format Complete pop-up screen appears.
Open Disk Manager by pressing Windows key + R, in the run prompt type diskmgmt. msc, hit Enter key, it will open the disk management that will list all the disks that are connected to the computer. Check if you can see the USB drive. If it is listed.
– Manual Method via Diskpart – Windows:
- Open a command Prompt as administrator (cmd.exe)
- Type Diskpart and press Enter.
- Type List Disk and press Enter.
- Type Select Disk X (where X is the disk number of your USB drive) and press Enter.
- Type Clean and press Enter.
- Type Create Partition Primary and press Enter.
To format a partition using Disk Management, use these steps:
- Open Start.
- Search for Disk Management and click the top result to open the experience.
- Right-click the new hard drive and select the Format option.
- In the "Value label" field, type a descriptive name for the drive.
Cleaning a Disk in Windows 7 (or later) Using Diskpart
- Open Disk Management and locate the disk in question.
- Open the Start menu and go to "Accessories".
- At the prompt, type "diskpart" and hit Enter.
- At the diskpart prompt type "list disk".
- At the diskpart prompt, type "select disk x", where x is the disk number that you want to clean.
To partition and format your drive, you can use Windows' built-in tool called Disk Management. You can repartition and format your hard drives in Windows using the Disk Management tool. In Windows 7, click Start. Next, right-click Computer, then click Manage.
So for pen drive and memory cards FAT32 is better file system, unless u have a file over 4gb to copy, and NTFS is good for Hard disk with size more than 3TB and exFAT is not mostly used file system though it is better by not supported everywhere.
Reformatting hard disk drive will delete all the files on the computer including harmful files to restore the system to the optimal performance. Tip: Making a backup is a wise choice before formatting your hard drive in case important data get lost.
For your information, you can always format a hard drive within minutes or half an hour, depending on the hard drive capacity and used space on it. As estimated, to do a 'full' format on a 1TB hard disk in Windows, it will take a long time, like 2- hours, and over a USB 2.0 connection, it may take a day!
Enable and Format the Drive in Disk Management
Open the Start menu and type "disk management," and press Enter when the Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions option appears. Once Disk Management loads, scroll down to see if your disk appears in the list. If it does, make sure it's online and formatted.There are several reasons why the external HDD won't format problem may occur, this include: Malware or virus infection. Missing or damaged DLL, SYS, or EXE files. Incorrect drive format.
Linux Hard Disk Format Command
- Step #1 : Partition the new disk using fdisk command. Following command will list all detected hard disks:
- Step#2 : Format the new disk using mkfs.ext3 command.
- Step#3 : Mount the new disk using mount command.
- Step#4 : Update /etc/fstab file.
- Task: Label the partition.
How to format and mount a disk permanently using its's UUID.
- Find the disk name. sudo lsblk.
- Format the new disk. sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/vdX.
- Mount the disk. sudo mkdir /archive sudo mount /dev/vdX /archive.
- Add mount to fstab. Add to /etc/fstab : UUID=XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX /archive ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1.
Step 2: Download Windows 10 ISO file:
- Step 3: Create a bootable copy using Unetbootin:
- BIOS/UEFI Setup Guide: Boot from a CD, DVD, USB Drive or SD Card.
And you want to run both together.
- Step 1: Prepare partition for Windows Installation in Ubuntu 16.04. To install Windows 10, it is mandatory to have Primary NTFS partition created on Ubuntu for Windows.
- Step 2: Install Windows 10. Start Windows Installation from bootable DVD/USB stick.
- Step 3: Install Grub for Ubuntu.
Here's how to mount a USB hard disk drive (ie; external storage) on a Linux server, through the command line. First, attach the hard disk and turn it on. Then look in /var/log/messages for a message similar to the ones shown in bold. This will tell you the device-location of your recently attached hdd.
Formatting is a relatively easy process in most cases. All you need is your flash drive and a computer. Simply right-click on the flash drive under My Computer on Windows or under Devices in the Finder on Mac, and choose “Format,” which should allow you to change the file format to the one you want.
