How to format a hard drive?

[Stumpy Doofleer]

I have just bought an external hard drive which is formatted using FAT32 and I loaded all my off roading videos from my other hard drive onto it but can't transfer some of the bigger files because it is formatted using FAT32. So I tried formatting the ext drive and windows say's you can't format this drive because there are windows open concerning this drive, because I left clicked on the hard drive and then clicked Format. What am I doing wrong, do I need to go into DOS and format it that way, and if so how is it just format F:\ . My computer is running Windows XP.

[floyd fan]

Reboot to make sure nothing is open from the drive you want to format.
open windows explorer, right click on the drive.
Format.

[toppa]

I think as floyd says, the only time you have problems is when formatting the c drive and you need the original disk, well at least i did...


Cheers

[Stumpy Doofleer]

Tried clicking Format when I left clicked on the drive and didn't work. I have deleted all files from the hard drive and windows is running on another internal hard drive. I am formatting the hard drive in DOS but it is just formating it using FAT 32 and not NTFS which is what I need to get the bigger video files onto the drive. Is there a way to change the format type from FAT32 to NTFS in DOS?

[P00DLE]

from the command prompt type "format DRIVELETTER /fs:ntfs /q" this will quick format the disk using ntfs

[Stumpy Doofleer]

Thanks for that Chris, when I foramtted the drive using DOS but formatting in FAT32 and then left clicking on the drive in windows explorer it formatted it using NTFS it worked, but your way seems a lot quicker because I have formatted my drive twice today, each time about 2 1/2 hours.

[P00DLE]

a quick format should take a couple of minutes thats all mine take for 250gig drives. if the command line doesnt work tag /x on the end and it forcibly demounts the drive first.