How do I force a hard drive to initialize?

Press Win + R, and type: diskmgmt. msc and click OK or right-click on This PC and select Manage to open Disk Management tool. Find the HDD or SSD that you need to initialize and right-click on it, select Initialize Disk. Select the disk to initialize and set the disk as MBR or GPT.

Consequently, why can't I initialize my hard drive?

Generally, if your disk shows not initialized, it's probably caused by MBR corruption or physical damage. If your disk becomes unknown and not initialized and shows as unallocated space, you can initialize the disk and then recover data with EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to fix the issue.

Also Know, how do I fix my external hard drive not initialized? To initialize a hard disk in Windows Disk Management:

Connect the uninitialized external hard drive, HDD or other storage devices to your PC.
Press Win + R keys to bring up Run, and type: diskmgmt.
Find the uninitialized, unknown external hard drive with I/O device error > Right-click on it and select Initialize Disk.

Furthermore, how do you initialize a hard drive?

Step 1: In Windows 10/8, press "Windows + R" key, type "diskmgmt. msc" and click OK to launch Disk Management. In Windows 7, right-click Computer and then select Manage option to run Disk Management. Step 2: Find and right-click the hard drive or SSD you want to initialize, and then click "Initialize Disk".

How do I initialize a hard drive with Diskpart?

Press Enter, it will pop out a command prompt. Or, you can press "WIN+R" and type "cmd" to open the prompt. Then, type diskpart in the prompt and press Enter. So, here you should typelist disk first, when it list all the disks, typeselect disk , which you want to initialize.

35 Related Question Answers Found

Will initializing a hard drive erase it?

Solely initializing a disk won't erase its data. But in order to use the disk, you need to further partition and format the disk, which will cause data loss. Thus, if you don't want to lose files existing on your hard drive, using data recovery software is necessary.

How do I fix a bad hard drive?

Part 1. Check the Bad Sectors on Your Hard Drive

Step 1: Download the free partition manager and install it.
Step 2: The operation will be immediately performed.
Note: Do remember to connect your good new hard drive to the computer as a storage device before upgrading the disk with bad sectors to the good one.

Why is my HDD not being detected?

Check for Damaged or Unplugged Data Cable

It's possible that the connection on your motherboard or hard drive is faulty or is poor. Your system will not detect the hard drive if the data cable is damaged or connection is incorrect. To test the connection, you can replace the cable with another cable.

How do I fix this device is not ready?

Try to re-install the device driver and fix the "device is not ready" warning.

1) Go to Device Manager, right-click the name of your device, select Uninstall.
2) Keep your device connected. Restart the PC and Windows will attempt to re-install the driver.

How do I initialize a Seagate external hard drive?

Fix#1: Initialize Seagate External Hard Drive

Right-click on My Computer.
Choose Manage.
Open Disk Management.
Right-click on your Seagate portable drive.
Choose Initialize Disk.
Select Seagate external disk from list.
Prefer MBR partition style.
Hit OK button.

How do I initialize a new hard drive in Windows 10?

To properly set up a blank hard drive, use these steps:

Open Start.
Search for Disk Management and click the top result to open the experience.
Right-click the hard drive marked as "Unknown" and "Not Initialized," and select Initialize Disk.
Check the disk to initialize.
Select the partition style:
Click the OK button.

What happens when you initialize a hard drive?

Don't initialize the disk, which would erase all of the data on it. Initializing is only needed when a disk is brand new and hasn't been used. After a disk is initialized, you can create partitiions on it. After a partition is created, you can format the partition to create a file system.

How do I initialize a hard drive without losing data?

Go to Start with the right mouse button. Select Disk Management. In a new window, click on the new hard drive; if it is “Offline”, then change the status to “Online”. Then right-click on it and select “initialize new disk”.

Why is my SATA drive not detected?

The BIOS will not detect a hard disk if the data cable is damaged or the connection is incorrect. Serial ATA cables, in particular, can sometimes fall out of their connection. Be sure to check your SATA cables are tightly connected to the SATA port connection.

Should I initialize MBR or GPT?

GPT is better than MBR if your hard disk is larger than 2TB.

Since you can only use 2TB of space from a 512B sector hard disk if you initialize it to MBR, you'd better format your disk to GPT if it is larger than 2TB. But if the disk is employing 4K native sector, you can use 16TB space.

How do I partition a new SSD?

Step 1: At the start, type Disk Management and you will see a list of connected hard drives. Step 2: Right-click one SSD partition and select "Shrink Volume". Enter the amount of space you want to shrink then click on the "Shrink" button. (This would create unallocated space.)

How long does it take to format a hard drive?

For your information, you can always format a hard drive within minutes or half an hour, depending on the hard drive capacity and used space on it. As estimated, to do a 'full' format on a 1TB hard disk in Windows, it will take a long time, like 2- hours, and over a USB 2.0 connection, it may take a day!

Do you have to format a new SSD?

Actually, when you get a new SSD, you need to format it in most cases. That's because that SSD drive can be used on a variety of platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux and so on. In this case, you need to format it to different file systems like NTFS, HFS+, Ext3, Ext4, etc.

How do I recover files from undetected external hard drive?

Steps to recover data from undetected hard disk:

Download the AnyRecover from the official website. Install and Launch it, then select the hard disk you want to recover data from.
Click “Start”, then the scanning process will begin.
Preview the files that scanned out by the software.

How do I fix a corrupted external hard drive?

How to fix a corrupted external hard drive WITHOUT formatting

On the desktop, open This PC (My Computer) and select the desired external hard drive. Right-click it and select Properties -> Tools -> Click on Check.
Use chkdsk.
Use Disk Management.
Use diskpart.

How do I know if my external hard drive is broken?

Common symptoms of external hard drive failure include:

Failure to Mount or Recognize.
Excessively Loud Operation.
Clicking, Whirring or Grinding Sounds.
Disappearing Files or Folders.
File Corruption Error Messages.
Extremely Slow Drive Access Times.

How do I recover an unallocated hard drive?

Steps to recover data in the unallocated hard disk drive:

Download and install AnyRecover on your PC. Launch the program.
Select the disk you want to recover data from. Then, click the “Scan” tab.
Preview through the files and select the ones to recover by clicking the “Recover” tab.