How To Format a Hard Drive in Windows 8 or 8.1

1. Open Windows 8 Disk Management, available from Administrative Tools in Control Panel.
   
   Tip: Disk Management is also available from the Power User Menu and is probably the quickest way to open it.
   
   Note: You can also open Disk Management from the Command Prompt in Windows 8 but one of the other methods I already mentioned will probably be faster for most of you.
    
2. Now that Disk Management is open, find which drive you want to format from the list at the top.
3. Important: If the drive you want to format is not listed, or an Initialize Disk window appears, it means that the drive is not yet partitioned. See How To Partition a Hard Drive in Windows 8 for instructions, then continue on below.
   
   Tip: You can't format the hard drive that Windows 8 is installed on, usually the C: drive, from Disk Management. If this is what you want to do, see How To Format C for your options.
   
   Tip: If you want to format your hard drive so you can install Windows 8 from scratch, please know that your hard drive will be automatically formatted as part of that process. See How To Clean Install Windows 8 for more on that.
    
4. Once you've found the hard drive you want to format, right-click or tap-and-hold on it and choose Format.... A small window called "Format [drive letter]:" should open.
   
   Warning: It's extremely important to pick the correct drive you want to format. Be sure you triple-check that this is the drive you're intending to format in Windows 8.
    
5. In the Volume label: textbox, either leave the drive name as is or give it a new name. Windows 8 assigns a volume label of New Volume if hard drive isn't already formatted.
   
   Tip: Since the volume label will be the identifying name used around Windows 8, picking one that makes some kind of sense seems reasonable. For example, you might name this hard drive Pictures if you're planning on using it to store photos on.
   
   Note: The volume label can easily be changed at any time in the future, without formatting the hard drive again, so don't worry about this right now if you're not sure what to name it.
    
6. For the File system: option, choose NTFS unless there's a specific reason you need to use a different file system.
   
   NTFS is almost always the best file system option to use in Windows 8 unless you have a specific need to choose FAT32. Other FAT file systems are only available as options on drives 2GB and smaller.
    
7. Set the Allocation unit size: to Default unless you need to set it as a custom size. There are very few reasons to change this.
    
8. If Windows 8 suggests that you Perform a quick format but I highly recommendunchecking the option so that a standard, "full" format will run.
   
   When a full format is run, a one-pass write zero data wipe is performed (great for previously used drives), as well as error checking on each sector of the hard drive (great for new and older drives).
   
   A quick format skips both the error checking and the basic data sanitization. Yes, it'll be a lot faster, but you miss out on those two important things I mentioned above.
    
9. You'll probably find the Enable file and folder compression option unchecked and I recommend keeping it that way.
   
   Note: File and folder compression can be enabled to save on disk space and you're welcome to enable it if you think you may benefit from it. However, most drives are so large today that the tradeoff between the saved space and lower drive performance probably aren't worth it.
    
10. Touch or click the OK button.
     
11. Touch or click OK on the window that says "Formatting this volume will erase all data on it. Back up any data you want to to keep before formatting. Do you want to continue?".
    
    Windows 8 will immediately begin formatting the hard drive.
     
12. Keep track of the format process using the Formatting: (xx%) progress indicator in theStatus field at the top of the Disk Management screen.
    
    Note: It could take a very long time to format a hard drive in Windows 8 if the drive is large and/or your computer is slow. Windows 8 might format a smaller, 2 GB hard drive in just seconds, while a larger 2 or 3 TB hard drive might take hours.
     
13. Formatting is finished when the progress text in the Status field changes to Healthy.
     
14. Now that Windows 8 has formatted the hard drive, you can use it to install programs, store photos or music, back up data, or whatever else you had planned for it. Note: If you created multiple partitions on this hard drive, return to Step 3 above to format those additional volumes.

Tips & More Information

1. Not a Windows 8 user? See How Do I Format a Hard Drive in Windows? for specific instructions for your version of Windows.
    
2. When you fully format a hard drive in Windows 8 you also perform a very basic data wipe as well. See How To Wipe a Hard Drive for some arguably more thorough methods of truly erasing everything on a hard drive.
    
3. If you're not happy with the drive letter that Windows 8 assigned during the partitioning process, you're welcome to change it at any time. See How to Change Drive Letters in Windows 8 for instructions.