Formatting an external HD

[dlk289]

I just bought a new hard drive, Western Digital Passport. It's a small 120gb hard drive that runs solely off the usb connector. It came with a bunch of what i like to call crap on the hard drive, extra programs, autorun, and disc management. Those are probably help full with people that had a hard time figuring out how to plug the device in however, i don't want any of those things on it. I can right click on the device in My Computer and click format but i thought i might ask some people in the know if that is the right thing to do. All i really want is for my external hard drive to act like my usb flash drive; a clean directory to do whatever i wish with.

thanks for the responses

[bLack0ut]

You should be safe.. usually the stuff that comes with is just pure junk.

[oakstave]

You should be safe.. usually the stuff that comes with is just pure junk.

QFT

Later if you need any of that software, you can install it. But you probably won't.

[jjdog711]

Yup your safe to reformat the drive, there is no software that is needed for hard drives because it's run from windows drivers.

[Rav]

I would go into disk management to make sure there are no extra or hidden partitions on the drive that hold special software (like C3 flash drives have). You can get to that by right clicking on My Computer and going to Manage, then Disk Management. You can format from there once you are ready.