Initializing a hard drive? How?

[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?

[BluesMan1]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...nced/ntfs.mspx

Hope this will help

[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.

[BluesMan1]

You're welcome, i'm glad that it is working now

[illiniwatcher]

Thanks! That did the trick!

[Junkyman]

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

[iansta_guy]

i've been searching for a good answer to this question because I bought a unformated hard drive for my media enclosure and needed to use windows vista. I was hopeing to find the simple way of doing it, and had forgotten that I had done it before. In facto lots of times every times I had installed a operating system. so even though I found out that you can use vista's {control pannel/computer management /disk management/right click-(drive) /initialize } I found it much easyer to pop in my old xp boot disk, with the hard drive as the only one in the computer. Then simply canceling when it finishes the farmat part of the instalation. so obvious but if you don't have a compatable boot disk. thankfully vista being bloated and all, at least added some usefull features built in even if there hard to find.

hope my posts usefull and less a rant cheer's

[hamolkin]

yes, totally. first you have to right click on the name of the new drive (in Disk Management) to initialise, only then can you do the format wizard.... by right clicking on the space available to 'create simple volume'.... thanks all