What is to format your hard drive?

To wipe it clean...

Sometimes people say format or re-format when the mean you format it and then reinstall your OS, but usually it's just wiping it,,,

Format=Delete

if you format your hard drive, ALL data on it will be lost and you will have nothing in it's place i think the phrase format came form the options you have... fat, fat 32 NTFS etc...

a quick format will only format the part of the drive that points to where the files are physically located on the drive. if this option is chosen, the files still remain on the drive and can be recovered with recovery software.

only format your drive if you are sure you want to!!!

formatting mean formatting hard drive with file system so that operating system can use it .

yes formatting drives literally deletes all the data from the drive but this is not true . data is just marked deleted unless you write data onto to the disk , data is recoverable my tool. disk wiping actually deletes all the data and data is not recoverable in this case . formatting dive with a file system is necessary to use that drive with a pc .

Yes it deletes everything that was stored on that hard drive.

e.g. If you were to format C: where we normally install the OS and other drivers like, display, sound, etc. then everything would be gone.