Initializing a hard drive? How?

**boombastik** · February 21st, 2010, 04:36 PM

i have tried it on a few differnet PC and get the same error

**compteckstupid** · March 25th, 2010, 08:37 PM

THAHK YOU SO MACCH IT'S STUPID BUT I DIDN'T NOW

**NJKatwoman** · April 14th, 2010, 03:30 PM

I keep getting the error message, "The request could not be performed due to an I/O device error"
I have been trying to access files and pictures on my Simple Tech external hard drive. It worked on my old Win 98 and 2000 systems, but I cannot get it to work on Win Vista.
I can see it in Device Manager, it tells me that "this device is working properly". I don't see the drive listed when I click My Computer. How do I get this blasted thing to open up so that I can retrieve important video files, etc?
Thank you

Originally Posted by Erzexeget

easy to resolve:

1. right click on My Computer
2. left click on Manage
3. left click on Disk Manager
4. right click on the icon of the hd
5. left click on Initialize

best regards,

Erzexegt

**jf24** · May 30th, 2010, 08:57 PM

Hi,

So I managed to do all these steps:

1. right click on My Computer
2. left click on Manage
3. left click on Disk Manager
4. right click on the icon of the hd
5. left click on Initialize

But my computer shut down during the format! What should I do now?
It shows the drive as healthy and active and the bar is blue, but cannot do anything on my e-drive.

**Lasher13** · July 22nd, 2010, 02:38 AM

NJKatWoman,
This is what I recommend, update all of your Windows Vista drivers, make sure you are all the way updated to SP2 and all Vista SP2 updates as well. Simple Tech external hard-drive? Isn't that E-Sata? Make sure all the connections are secure within your board going to that drive. You might want to try a different cable, due to the I/O error. But other than that, it reallly sounds like a driver issue, as if Vista isn't supporting it. Usually whenever I connect an HD from another Windows operating system, Vista picks up the driver, installs it and reads it right away. If the above the steps do not work, than I would install this simple tech hard-drives driver directly, I would also go about making sure that this driver works within the compatibility mode of windows 98/2000. (PM me on how to go about doing that if needed) Personally these are the steps I would take and try before I took a trip down to Bestbuys GeekSquad.

jf24,
Honestly, I would uninstall and reinstall this hard-drives driver and than reformat it completley. In my opinion I consider it a mission failure whenever my PC shuts down in the middle of a format for any hard-drive. I could be wrong though, becuase I've only had experience formatting new hard drives and reformatting to start from scratch for my old hard-drives.(that were once new). But if I had valuable data on this hard drive, than I would especially try to just reformat the unaffected partition that was being formatted during the shut-down. Basically man, I would just re-try the steps and pray it doesn't shut down again.

On another note here, I just wanted say WOW.
I am amazed at the amount of people this thread has helped. I think this thread is a couple years old now, ROFLOL and stragglers on google are still finding it here and there. I just think that is amazing IMO. Yep Techimo the only place you can find out how to initialize a hard drive, IMO. "Hint the key words in the last sentence". LOL this will probably go on forever now.

**Doris Day** · August 26th, 2010, 07:19 AM

jf24.........that are good steps i also tried once

**toddmcenroe** · December 6th, 2010, 02:42 PM

I was able to get tothe initialize,but when I click on it ,it gives me an error message x this request could not be performed because of a I/O device error.What does this mean and what do I do

**HDRobbie** · February 1st, 2011, 03:12 PM

Originally Posted by Lasher13

"8.
Right-click your external drive (which will probably be drive E or drive F), and then click Format."

A quote from the link. Thanks for the help man. In vista you have to literally right click the new drive not the unallocated space on the drive and there it was initialize, before I was right clicking the empty box beside it that said unallocated space. And it wouldn't let me initialize. Hmmm.... seems very odd that no hardware detection wizard or anything came up when I installed the hard drive in the first place. Oh well, no worries now, Thanks again BluesMan1.

I have had a very similar problem except I cannot initialize the drive using Disk mamagement. It keeps saying "data error (cyclic redubndancy check)". Not having any luck getting past it.

**stroyal** · February 21st, 2011, 06:51 AM

spam reported, and removed

**JMSiefer** · March 13th, 2011, 11:24 PM

Originally Posted by Junkyman

Right click the picture instead of the unallocated space.
That was just the tip I needed. Thanks!

I can't believe it. I've been spending so much time on trying to fix this, and that cleared it up. I saw my two drives up top, but I never thought of looking for my connected USB drive on the bottom list. Once I initialized it, I formatted it, and it works on both my computers. THANK YOU!!!

**sicuom07** · March 15th, 2011, 06:15 AM

i have a new seagate hard drive and it dosent come up and it made the humming noise but i fixed all that then went into my computer and did the manage thing and went into disk managment and then it said unallocated so i clicked on it and clicked intialize.. everyone said this would work but it just comes up and says the driver cannot find the sector requested??????

**higster343** · September 23rd, 2011, 03:40 AM

Originally Posted by Lasher13

I keep getting this error " The operation cannot be completed becuase the disk is not initialized". I have windows vista and I just added a sata hdd. Currently I run off a IDE hard drive and DVD rom drive and decided to add a sata drive. I want to format this disc and assign it to the letter E:/
In the control panel I went to administrative tools, computer management, storage. There I right click my unallocated space a click assign a simple partition and try to format it from there. Than bam I get that error. Ah man I just want some extra space.

So whats up with that? How do I initialize a hard-drive?

I have a similar problem to this, except when I right click to initialise, I get the error message that the device is not ready. Any helpers?

**Karl Rand** · October 6th, 2011, 02:15 PM

Never a requirement to initialize a drive in the past. Was installing a new WD Black Scorpio (250gb) in an Sata to USB enclosure to use as a HDD backup.

I was clicking on the UNALOCATED space in the control panel and getting the "ERROR" message.

Solution: Needed to click on the picture of the DRIVE,, oh, how simple some solutions are !!!!

Then I could click on the unformatted space and,, how darn,, the drive formatted.

Thanks again for having this thread on the internet. The advise fixed the problem.

**daniel.jackson** · May 17th, 2012, 05:55 AM

Hi I am not able to open my message box, when ever i try to open it it says initialising, not able to understand what it is can anyone help me how to come out of it.

Regards
Jackson

**ryount** · November 13th, 2012, 11:49 AM

Following your list to "initialize" I arrived at "right click on Disk Manager" and then "left click on Initialize"

Initialize was not an option

I clicked on "disk management" and Windows 7 attempted to "load" disk characteristics. At that point, it determined my new drive was not initialized, and popped up a window, naming the drive that needed to be initialized. Click. Done.

Windows 7 Ultimate Nov 13, 2012