What is Disk Formatting?

Disk formatting is a complicated process of partitioning a selected drive (hard drive, USB flash drive or others). In other words, that drive is divided into one or several regions and becomes visible to an operating system. During this process, your computer creates a new file system, where you can store your data.

When do you need to format your disk?

• When purchasing a new disk: sometimes new disks do not have any file system by default. In this case, you will have to create one yourself by formatting this disk.


• When your disk is damaged: this issue often happens with computer hard drives and is usually caused by a virus. In the best-case scenario, there will be minor system glitches, in the worst - the disk may stop working at all. But there is no need to worry, formatting the disk should help in this case.

What happens when you format a disk?

Firstly, the operating system analyzes the disk. It scans the storage space for bad sectors and marks them as unsuitable for storing any data in the future. This process destroys the old file system completely and replaces it with the new one. As a result, all data stored on this disk will be erased too. That’s why many technicians recommend that a user should backup all important files before formatting.

Is it possible to restore data from a formatted disk?

If you had a bad luck and accidentally deleted files while formatting your disk, then you could try restoring them with a special file recovery tool. Phoenix Files Rescue is a great one. The software will scan the formatted disk and find data with a high recovery chance. Then you will be able to look through the results and decide what you want to restore.

You can improve the recovery chances if you start restoring the data right after formatting the disk. Usually, formatting doesn’t wipe out data completely - it just tags the deleted files with “0”. This allows you to store new data in their place. That’s why, the longer you use the storage after formatting, the more difficult it will be to get the lost data back.

How to recover files after formatting a disk?

The best way is to use a good file recovery program. Phoenix File Rescue is a flexible program to recover data of different types. With its help, you will be able to scan various devices like hard drives, USB memory sticks or SD cards and get the lost files back. You can restore photos, documents, videos, music and other data. What’s more, the software allows you to fine-tune the scan settings: choose a scanning mode, select the formats and size of the lost files.

Now you know more about disc formatting. Ready to recover deleted files from your hard drive? Then download Phoenix File Rescue from the official website and start restoring formatted files right now!