How do I Initialize a Hard Drive?

[ThatPlace928]

I have a hard drive that tells me I need to initialize it but no option to do that. I have another drive that shows up in Disk Management that says "RAW" file format.

How do I get either of these to initialize when there's no option for it? Is there a certain tool I can get online that will help me get these 2 up and running? Suggestions?

 

[britechguy]

My usual way of initializing a drive that can be initialized (as it is possible to have a failed drive) is to use a combination of diskpart and Disk Management or just do everything in diskpart.

Just the other night I re-initialized an SSD using diskpart. Once you have diskpart open in either command prompt or Power Shell, and have done a "list disk," identified the disk you want to initialize, and done a select disk on it, this is the sequence I follow:

clean
convert gpt (note, this step is optional. If the drive is intended to be the system boot drive, it's required, if for just data, it's not)
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs
assign letter=E (pick your drive letter)
exit


After having done this, the drive should be showing up in File Explorer with the assigned letter.

If anything bombs out while using diskpart as noted above, the drive itself is probably dead.

 

[ThatPlace928]

My usual way of initializing a drive that can be initialized (as it is possible to have a failed drive) is to use a combination of diskpart and Disk Management or just do everything in diskpart.

Just the other night I re-initialized an SSD using diskpart. Once you have diskpart open in either command prompt or Power Shell, and have done a "list disk," identified the disk you want to initialize, and done a select disk on it, this is the sequence I follow:

clean
convert gpt (note, this step is optional. If the drive is intended to be the system boot drive, it's required, if for just data, it's not)
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs quick
assign letter=E (pick your drive letter)
exit


After having done this, the drive should be showing up in File Explorer with the assigned letter.

If anything bombs out while using diskpart as noted above, the drive itself is probably dead.

I'll try that and, if I have any questions, I'll be back to ask.