This is the command you should run when you connect a new hard drive to your PC

We must say that the Diskpart function is more focused on partitioned or conflicting storage drives. When we talk about conflicting drives, sometimes some drives cause problems for quick formatting. For these cases we need a solution and Windows offers us a very complete one.

Format a hard drive from CMD

You should know that it is somewhat slower and more tedious than doing it using the “quick format” function that Microsoft offers. As a detail, you should know that this function has not been updated for about three decades and was generated in one afternoon, so it is a rather incomplete mechanism.

The process to use command prompt formatting is not overly complicated. To format a hard drive, SSD or USB memory using command, you must follow these steps:

1. Type the term “Command Prompt” in Windows Search and open it as administrator.
2. A notice will appear on the screen and we must say “Yes.”
3. Enter the diskpart command and press “Enter” to enter this function.
4. Now we are going to ask you to list all the units connected to our computer, to do this enter the following command: list disk
5. We have the list of connected units and their capacity. You should know that “Disk 0” belongs to the operating system and does not allow this process to be carried out. We recommend only connecting the storage drive you want to format.
6. Next, we must select the unit, to do this we must write this command: select disk *disk number*.
   • Now the following message should appear: The *disc number* is now the selected disk.
   • If you want to verify it, enter the “list disk” command again and you will see that an asterisk appears before the selected disk.
7. To delete all files and folders on this drive, we must enter the following command: clean
   • It will inform us that the process has been completed satisfactorily and we will even get a notice from the file explorer.
8. Now let’s create a partition, to do this we enter this command: create partition primary
   • It should appear on the screen that “the specified partition has been successfully created.”
9. Now, we must proceed to select the partition with this command: select partition 1
10. Next, we must enter the command: active
11. The next thing we must do is format it, to do this, we will write the command: format fs=ntfs
    • This is the usual format, if you want to set another format, you just have to write “exfat” or “fat32” instead of ntfs.
    • You should know that this process may take a while.
12. We are going to assign a letter, to do this, we put this command: assing letter=*letra*
    • You can give it any letter except “C”, since it is the letter that is assigned to the main storage drive.
13. Finally, we write “exit” and press “Enter” so that the command prompt closes.

As you can see, it is not a complicated process, but it is slower and requires more patience. This method is extremely useful for erasing stubborn partitions or formatting stubborn drives.