Here you can learn how to download and use WD Quick Formatter to format WD external hard drive in Windows 10, 8, 7 in detailed guide. Besides, a more powerful WD formatter will also be shared for your selection.
WD Quick Formatter Tool, also called WD Advanced Format Drives (AFDs), is a format utility developed by Western Digital Technologies, Inc. for Windows and Mac. The WD Quick Formatter is only for external drives, like WD My Passport Ultra. By default, WD Quick Formatter will format the drive to FAT32 or NTFS and after formatting, only one will be left in order to optimize the performance of the drive. Reformating and repartitioning the external drive is also available.
In most cases, this format tool is used to repair a corrupted hard drive, i.e. when you cannot use the external drive. It will help you fix the problem and access the drive. However, sometimes we format an external hard drive using WD Quick Formatter software for Windows backup. Except for WD external hard drive, one can also run WD Quick Formatter on a Seagate external drive or other brands of an external drive.
You can download WD Quick Formatter for Windows 7 or Windows 10 on WD official website and check out the following guide to learn how to format an external WD hard drive. Once formatting is finished, all data on the drive will be erased. Please backup files that you care about most to a safe place.
1. Connect the external drive to your PC. Download and install WD Quick Formatter for Windows 10, 8, 7, or XP. Mostly, you need to unzip it before installing it.
2. When it is started, a welcome window will come into your sight. Read the warning and click “Continue”.
3. Accept the “End User License Agreement”.
4. Now, the program will scan for external drives to be formatted. When it completes scanning, select the drive you want to format from the drop-down list.
Tip: If the external drive is 2TB in size or less, you can directly format it. If it is greater than 2TB, you have “Factory Default” and “XP Compatible” two options to select. Choose the right one according to your situation.
5. Click on "Format Drive" and wait for the formatting process to be completed. Finally, click “Exit” to leave the window.
Why would you need another format utility? It is true that the WD Quick Formatter is easy to use with advanced technologies embedded. Nevertheless, situations like WD Quick Formatter format external drive failing or WD Quick Formatter not working are complained about by users now and then. What’s worse, this application not allowing 4K to 512 sector format, which may reduce the performance of portable solid-state drives.
Therefore, if you’re unlucky and encounter one of these situations, you can try an alternative to WD Quick Formatter – AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. This freeware allows you to format WD, Seagate, or other external drives to NTFS, FAT32, FAT, EXT2, or EXT3 in a few clicks. It supports the quick format, change the cluster size of the file system and specify partition label during formatting. Moreover, it can format both external and internal (Western Digital) hard drives.
1. Connect the external drive to your computer and make sure it can be detected by Windows. Download Windows 7 WD Quick Formatter alternative – AOMEI Partition Assistant. Install and launch it.
2. Right-click the external drive and select “Format Partition”.
3. At this window, specify the partition label, file system as well as cluster size. Then click “OK”.
4. Click “Apply” in the toolbar to execute the pending operation.
Within only 4 steps, you can finish the formatting using AOMEI Partition Assistant as you do with the WD Quick Formatter tool in Windows 7. Other than formatting partitions on an external drive, you can also use this software to format an internal disk. If you want to experience more handy features, you can upgrade to the Professional edition.