Initializing the disk: step by step instruction

Unfortunately, not every user when buying a new hard disk imagines that after installing it in the system unit it will be impossible to work with the hard drive immediately, considering that it is enough to insert the appropriate loops and fix it with screws, and the system will determine the device itself. First of all, after the hardware is installed, the hard disk must be initialized. Automatically, Windows-systems do not do this, so all operations will have to be done on their own.

Installing a new hard disk

Before you directly deal with the problem of how to initialize a hard disk, you should take care of its correct installation in the system unit with the connection, observing certain rules and methods of precaution.

To do this, remove the side cover when the computer is turned off and the power supply is disconnected. Then, very importantly, before installing the hard drive into the slot, it is necessary to remove the electrostatic charge from your body, in the simplest case - by simply touching the nozzle of a conventional water tap or with the chassis of the disconnected system unit with both hands. After that, the hard disk is fixed with screws and connected to the motherboard with the appropriate stub and jumpers in accordance with the Master / Slave rule (main or subordinate drive), after which the side cover of the case is installed into place.

Initializing the hard disk in BIOS settings

Now you can start the initial setup of the installed hard drive. First, you need to turn on the computer and go to the BIOS primary I / O settings section. Usually Del, F2 keys or some combinations are used for this, which at the moment of launch will be displayed on the monitor screen.

Here in the main section, where all the devices currently connected to the motherboard are shown, find their hard drive, given its interface (SATA or IDE). If the hard drive is detected, you can proceed with the basic setup by using the BIOS output and then automatically rebooting. Otherwise, if there are no devices in the list or the Not Detected line is present, after connecting and disconnecting the PC, it is necessary to check the correctness of the connection again.

How to initialize a hard disk: the main Windows tool

We proceed from the fact that the hard drive in the BIOS is defined. Now, you need to initialize the disk. Windows after full boot automatically recognizes the new device and installs the appropriate drivers for it (you can verify that they are available when you view the drivers folder in the System32 directory where the disk.sys and partmgr.sys files will be present). At this stage, the drive itself is not visible in the Explorer, although it is physically present in the system.

The drive is initialized using the system's own tool in the disk management section . You can call this section from the "Control Panel" through the administration system with the choice of the computer management menu or from the right-click menu on the computer icon, but the use of the "Run" console, in which the diskmgmt.msc command is prescribed, is easier and faster.

Start initialization and set the type of boot record

The disk is initialized. First, select your hard drive in the list of devices present (it can be labeled as "Disk 1", "Disk 2", etc.), then right click call the menu and use the initialization string in it.

Next, a window appears in which you will have to select the MBR main boot record line, then press the confirmation button ("OK") and wait for the process to finish.

If the hard drive has a capacity of more than 2 TB, you will need to set the GPT attribute (otherwise it will not be possible to use large amounts). In the event that an error occurs during the initialization of the disk, you will need to take appropriate measures to eliminate it. This will be discussed separately.

The process of creating a volume

The next step is to initialize the disk to create a partition. This is done so that the computer system can "see" the disk.

On the selected disk, right click is made again, and the line for creating a simple volume is selected from the context menu, after which the corresponding "Wizard" opens, in which the continuation button is pressed.

Further, the initialization of the disk involves specifying the size of the partition being created in megabytes (immediately do the recalculation, since 1 GB contains not one thousand, but 1024 MB). Usually this is not required, because the system indicates the size of the volume automatically.

In the next stage, you need to assign the section to the letter, on which it will be determined by the system. Here you need to be very careful not to assign an already occupied identifier to the disc, which other removable media (CD / DVD-ROM, USB-devices, etc.) can correspond to, since in the future they may seem unworkable due to the fact that The system does not recognize them banally.

Selecting a file system and formatting

Finally, the initialization of the disk comes to the final stage, on which it will be necessary to format the created partition.

Here it is better to specify NTFS as the file system (it is considered more stable than FAT32 and can save files larger than 4 GB), the cluster size should be left at the default value of 512 bytes (this will allow for more efficient distribution and use of the resources of the created partition), As a volume label, you should enter a name that will be displayed in the system (file manager and context menus), and uncheck the quick formatting (for the first time it is strongly recommended to perform a full formatting, which will allow ezhat problems later). Compressing directories should not be used, since this can only lead to a slowdown of the disk's performance, related to the speed of reading or writing information to it.

Next, go to the completion window and, if all the parameters are set correctly, press the start button for formatting (Finish). If you need to change some parameters, use the button to return to the previous menu. At the end of the process, the system will display a message in the form of an autorun window, if it is on. But sometimes a warning may appear that the disk is not initialized.

What should I do if initialization errors occur?

With the new hard drives usually such problems do not happen. But if the system reports that the disk is not initialized, you can use the command line (cmd in the "Run" console) to resolve it.

It first uses the diskpart command, to view and select the disk - list disk, and clean the partition table clean. After that, you can perform manual formatting using the sequence of commands create partition primary, select partition 1, active and format fs = ntfs, which are entered without punctuation marks with the input key after each of them.

In other cases, you can use specialized programs like PartitionMagic, but if none of the tools help, you will have to check the connections again or look for disruptions in the hard drive itself (possibly physical damage). For these cases, you can try to use the HDD Regenerator program , and then perform all the above operations again.