Before a hard drive can be used for storing data, it should be properly formatted. Formatting is of two types – low level formatting and high level formatting. Low level formatting is done at the factory and creates the tracks, sectors and cylinders on the hard drive. High level formatting creates partitions and file systems on those partitions so finally files can be stored on it. It is the high level formatting that users are allowed to do from their computers, when they select the formatting options from Windows File Explorer.
Using formatting tools available in Windows operating system, users can format a disk only with NTFS, FAT32 or exFAT file systems. If you want some more options while formatting your storage media, then you can make use of a free tool called SuperDiskFormatter. It is a portable tool to format your hard drives, pen drives, memory cards, external hard drives and so on
It has a simple clutter-free user interface not much different from that of the in-built Windows formatting tool. You can select a disk (or partition), select a file system (from FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, reFS and UDF), you can optionally choose a volume label, you can pick an allocation unit size, and there are options for quick formatting or forced dismounting. And finally, you can click on Start Format to start the formatting process.
Quick format option allows you to create the filesystem entries quickly without really erasing the data on the partitions. And if you choose forced dismount option, then the partitions are dismounted forcibly from the operating system before the formatting process is started.
SuperDiskFormatter is a little tool that can come handy when formatting the partitions, hard drives or other memory storage devices. It supports formatting with new file system from Microsoft called reFS (resilient filesystem) and also UDF (universal disk format) that is popular for CD/DVD disks.
You can download SuperDiskFormatter from https://superdiskformatter.sourceforge.io/.