How to initialize new hard drive vista

If you only have one hard drive, it should show up as Disk 0. Therefore, your new drive should most likely be Disk 1. Underneath the name Disk 1 it should say Unknown, the size of the disk, and Not Initialized. Right click in this area and you should get a pop-up window. Click Initialize Disk and it should only take a couple of seconds. Once your new hard drive is initialized, you will still have to format the drive before you can use it.

Quick format : If the quick format option is chosen, format process removes files from the partition, but does not scan the disk for bad sectors. Only use this option if your hard disk has been previously formatted and you are sure that hard disk is not damaged. Before formatting of hard drive partitions process is carried out, it is important to first understand about partitions.

Hard drive data storage can be divided into smaller sections or parts which is called partitions. Formatting or single partitions can be executed without affecting the other partition.

This can be useful in certain situations but what if you want to format the entire hard drive. Windows Vista, 7 and 8 have a built-in Disk management tool. Applies To: Windows 10, Windows 8. If you add a brand new disk to your PC and it doesn't show up in File Explorer, you might need to add a drive letter , or initialize it before using it.

You can only initialize a drive that's not yet formatted. Initializing a disk erases everything on it and prepares it for use by Windows, after which you can format it and then store files on it. If your disk already has files on it that you care about, don't initialize it - you'll lose all the files. Instead we recommend troubleshooting the disk to see if you can read the files - see A disk's status is Not Initialized or the disk is missing entirely.

Here's how to initialize a new disk using Disk Management. If you prefer using PowerShell, use the initialize-disk cmdlet instead. In Disk Management, right-click the disk you want to initialize, and then click Initialize Disk shown here. If the disk is listed as Offline , first right-click it and select Online. Note that some USB drives don't have the option to be initialized, they just get formatted and a drive letter.