What Happens When You Format A Drive

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Summary :

In some cases, you need to format a drive to fix some issues. However, you may need to stop the format due to some reasons. How to cancel a format in process? Ways are various in different situations. Now, you can get the full solutions and some related information from this post.

Formatting (actually re-formatting) a solid state drive (SSD) is a quick and simple process to restore the drive to a clean state, similar to when the drive was new. If you are looking to sell or donate your old drive, you will want to not only reformat your drive, but also erase all the data in a separate action. You will need to format a hard drive in some specific situations like when your hard drive has a RAW file system, Windows reports 'disk not formatted', or your hard drive is infected by a virus. In addition to these cases, you may accidentally format your hard drive or external storage devices, which happens frequently among users. Answered 3 years ago Author has 528 answers and 1.3M answer views. Most common OS is installed on that drive. Mostly primary one. Now if you have only one OS then formatting in that case will makes your machine inoperable until you install it back.

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Do You Need to Cancel a Format in Process Windows 10/8/7

Usually, you can format the digital data storage devices like computer hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, and so forth to fix some issues including you need to format the disk drive before you can use it, external hard drive slow and unresponsive, the file is too large for the destination file system, etc.

You can enter the Windows File Explorer to format a drive, or you can use Disk Management or Command Prompt to do that job. If the volume of data on the drive is large, you can choose to use the quick format which can save a lot of time for you.

Tip: In this post, we will show you different ways to format a drive effectively: How to Format a Hard Drive with Ease in Windows 10/8/7?

However, sometimes, you may forget to choose to use quick format and you don't want to spend much time on formatting the drive. In this situation, you will ask how to cancel a format in process.

Now, please see the following real-life case:

You
I opened diskpart as admin and did a format fs=ntfs. Unfortunately my espresso-induced trigger twitch caused me to hit enter before I could finish typing 'quick'. I don't wanna sit and wait for hours. I also don't want to reboot. How do I force the darn thing to quit?forums.tomshardware.com

This is an issue about how to stop format fs=ntfs command prompt. Of course, there are some other similar issues like how to stop a disc from formatting, how to cancel USB format, how to stop secure erase process, how to make diskpart clean all cancel, etc.

Fortunately, it is possible to cancel a format if you want and we will introduce 3 different ways in the next part.

How to Cancel a Format in Process Windows 10/8/7

Usually, it is possible to cancel a format in process no matter you are using Windows File Explorer, Disk Management or Command Prompt. However, based on the different tools you are using, the ways to cancel a format are different.

Here, we summarize 3 ways according to 3 different situations. No matter you are using computer hard drives, USB drives or SD cards, you can use these solutions to cancel a format. On the other hand, if you are facing diskpart format stuck issue, you can also try these 3 methods.

Situation 1: How to Cancel a Format in Windows File Explorer

Indeed, it is quite easy to cancel a format in Windows File Explorer. When the formatting process is still going on, the formatting interface just stays in the desktop with the Cancel button which allows you to stop the formatting process manually.

Thus, you can just click on the Cancel button to stop a format in process.

Situation 2: How to Stop a Disc from Formatting Disk Management

What happens when you format a drive
I opened diskpart as admin and did a format fs=ntfs. Unfortunately my espresso-induced trigger twitch caused me to hit enter before I could finish typing 'quick'. I don't wanna sit and wait for hours. I also don't want to reboot. How do I force the darn thing to quit?forums.tomshardware.com

This is an issue about how to stop format fs=ntfs command prompt. Of course, there are some other similar issues like how to stop a disc from formatting, how to cancel USB format, how to stop secure erase process, how to make diskpart clean all cancel, etc.

Fortunately, it is possible to cancel a format if you want and we will introduce 3 different ways in the next part.

How to Cancel a Format in Process Windows 10/8/7

Usually, it is possible to cancel a format in process no matter you are using Windows File Explorer, Disk Management or Command Prompt. However, based on the different tools you are using, the ways to cancel a format are different.

Here, we summarize 3 ways according to 3 different situations. No matter you are using computer hard drives, USB drives or SD cards, you can use these solutions to cancel a format. On the other hand, if you are facing diskpart format stuck issue, you can also try these 3 methods.

Situation 1: How to Cancel a Format in Windows File Explorer

Indeed, it is quite easy to cancel a format in Windows File Explorer. When the formatting process is still going on, the formatting interface just stays in the desktop with the Cancel button which allows you to stop the formatting process manually.

Thus, you can just click on the Cancel button to stop a format in process.

Situation 2: How to Stop a Disc from Formatting Disk Management

If you are using Disk Management to format a disk, please just stay at the Disk Management, right-click on the target partition, and then choose Cancel Format from the popup list to cancel the format.

Then, you can discover that the formatting process ends successfully.

Situation 3: How to Cancel Format Command Prompt

Some of you prefer to use Command Prompt to format a drive. However, there is no command to cancel a format in process. Most ordinary users don't know how to stop format command. Actually, you need to enter Disk Management to stop it.

After opening Disk Management, you need to right-click on the disk which contains the partition under formatted in process and choose Offline from the pop-out list.

Then the formatting process stops and the whole disk will show as offline. Next, right-click on that disk and choose Online to use the disk again.

At last, you need to note that interrupting formatting hard drive/USB flash drive will leave the target drive as unformatted or RAW. Then, you still need to format the drive to its normal state.

If these solutions help you to cancel a format successfully, you can press the following button to share them with your friends on Twitter.

How to Recover Formatted Data Windows 10/8/7

Formatting a hard drive or a USB drive will delete all data on it. If you format a drive by mistake or without backing up the important files on it, you must want to recover them.

Here, before trying a formatted data recovery solution, you have to stop using the formatted drive as soon as possible since any newly written data could overwrite the formatted data on the drive.

Then, to recover formatted files, you can choose to use a piece of free data recovery software. MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a good option.

This data recovery tool has four recovery modes: This PC, Removable Disk Drive, Hard disk drive, and CD/DVD Drive.

Among these recovery modules, This PC can be used to recover data from formatted, damaged or RAW drives; Removable Disk Drive can retrieve files from USB sticks, memory cards, SD cards, and so forth.

You can choose a suitable recovery module according to your own situation.

In this post, suppose that you want to recover data from a partition on Windows 10. Thus, This PC is the module you need to use.

Firstly, you can download and install the Trial Edition of this software on your machine to have a try and see whether you can scan the formatted data you want to recover. Then, you can decide whether to update it to an advanced edition or not.

After installing the software on your computer, you can follow these steps to Recover Formatted Data from the computer hard drive.

Step 1: Open the software and you will enter This PC interface directly. The drives on the computer will be displayed on the software. Then, you need to choose the formatted drive and press the Scan button to start the scanning process.

If you only want to recover some certain types of files from the formatted drive, you can use the Settings feature of this software to make the corresponding selections.

Step 2: It will take a while to finish the scanning process. After that, you will see the scan result as follows.

By default, the scanned files will be shown by path. You can unfold each path to find the items you want to recover.

However, the scanned files are always large in volume and numbers. It may be difficult for you to locate the files you want to recover quickly. In this situation, you should try these functions of this software to get rid of the trouble:

  • Type: By using this function, the software will list the scanned files by type. Then, you can find your needed files by type quickly.
  • Find: Sometimes, you may still remember the names of the formatted files. In this situation, you can choose the Find function and enter the file's name to locate it directly.
  • Preview: With this software, you are allowed to preview some specified files which are not larger than 20MB. The supported data types include images and text files.

Step 3: The Trial Edition of this software doesn't allow you to save your needed files. If you want to use this tool to recover your files, you can update it to a full edition. If you are a personal user, the Personal Deluxe can meet your need.

After getting the license key of the software, you can press the Register key on the scan result and register the software immediately. Then, you can check the wanted items and press the Save button to choose a suitable path to save them.

Remember that do not save the selected files to the original location to avoid file overwrite problem.

Well, if you need to recover files from a formatted USB drive, SD card, or memory, just choose the Removable Disk Drive module and follow the wizards to do the job.

See! It is not difficult to recover the formatted data as long as you have this third-party MiniTool data recovery software. Why not share this program with others?

How to Convert FAT to NTFS without Data Loss

The person who asks how to stop format fs=ntfs is always doing the job to convert the file system of the drive from FAT to NTFS to enjoy the excellent performance of NTFS such as saving an individual file larger than 4GB.

Format Disk In Drive D

If you use the Windows snap-in tools, such as CMD, Disk Management and File Explorer, to convert FAT to NTFS, they will format all data on the target drive. For the drive which contains important files, it is not a good option to make such a conversion with the Windows snap-in tools.

However, if you have this third-party partition manager, MiniTool Partition Wizard, you will be able to convert FAT to NTFS without data loss.

Convert FAT to NTFS is available in MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition. You can download and install this free software on your computer to do the job like this:

Still, take the computer hard drive as an example.

Step 1: Launch the software to enter the main interface. Then, you need to find the target drive on the interface. Set drive D as an example. Click on that drive and choose Convert FAT to NTFS from the left action panel.

Step 2: Then, the Convert File System interface will pop out. Please click on the Start button to begin the conversion process.

Step 3: When the conversion process ends, you need to press the Close button to go back to the main interface of the software. Then, you can see that the file system conversion is successful and all of the data on the drive is kept well.

When you need to convert NTFS to FAT for some special needs, you can also use this software to achieve the aim without losing data. But, Convert NTFS to FAT is not available in the Free Edition. You need to update this software to an advanced edition to use it.

This previous post Two Ways to Help You Convert NTFS to FAT32 Successfully tells you the detailed steps to convert NTFS to FAT without data loss by using MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Bottom Line

If you don't know how to cancel a format in process, this post will be helpful for you since it shows you 3 different solutions based on 3 different situations.

Besides, if you also want to recover data from a RAW or formatted drive, you can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery mentioned in this post to do that job. Additionally, a related program MiniTool Partition Wizard is introduced here to convert file system from FAT32 to NTFS without data loss.

What Happens When You Format A Drive Thru

Should you have any question about canceling a format issue or MiniTool data recovery software, you can just leave a message in the comment or send an email to [email protected], Any useful ideas and suggestions are also appreciated here.





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