I will be building a new PC tomorrow if i have time, i have a brand new 500GB hard drive to go in it and a brand new copy of windows 7 home premium full version. As the hard drive is brand new, do i have to format the hard drive first? Or is it not necessary, my reason for asking is i think i read it somewhere recently but not sure if they were referring to upgrades or fresh install. For me it will be a complete fresh install.
Yeah, if your hard drive is brand new then it will be formatted during a fresh install to create the file system.
Yupp, you dont need to specifically format, unless you want to create partitions. Just go with the install and when needed it will format the disk.
New hard drives are without file system, so you need to format the new hd. Just follow the Windows 7 setup, it will guide you through all the steps.
New hard drive are already empty. So if you formatted your drive,it does not affect anything of your laptop.