Whether you're installing a brand-new drive or wiping an old one clean, formatting a drive is a basic maintenance task you should know how to do. Luckily, Windows 7 and 8 make this pretty easy.

Step by step tutorial on how to format a Hard Drive or Disk. Use built-in tools such as Diskpart, CMD, Disk Management, etc, to format.

If you are unsuccessful in formatting USB sticks using Windows on-board tools, you can alternatively use the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.

A full format verifies all sectors on the drive, whereas a quick format simply writes out data structures necessary to initialize the disk, and if there are any problems you won't know until later.