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What does initialization do to a hard disk?

Anonymous
2011-02-03T03:18:21+00:00

Would you give me a hand, please?

I have read the dialog between Avatarrrr and MVREF.  I have a similar problem but with a small laptop disk in an external USB 2.0 connected closure. The disk is 500 GB but has no jumpers to play with.  When using the Win 7 management-> storage disk management utility, I receive the instruction “You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it”. The disk is NTFS 100% data with no operating system on it. I like to know if it is safe to go ahead and initialize the disk and that no data will be lost. Lastly, what differences are between Initialize vs. Format?  Thank you in advance.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-02-03T06:51:22+00:00

    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.

    Boulder Computer Maven

    Microsoft Most Valuable Professional

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-01-03T21:58:41+00:00

    i have a similar problem on one of my hard drives that crushed but i managed to restore by replacing it's board, at first i was so thrilled as i need to retain the valuable data which i hadn't saved. iam worried that if i initialize the drive i will lose the data iam so desparately trying to recover. is there a way i can access my files before this initialiation iam forced to do? All i need is to recover my data.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-09-17T21:58:58+00:00

    This is a very good answer, although it does not actually erase all the data on it.

    Recently a Seagate drive (1.5tb) was showing bad sectors, and was still under warranty, so I backed it all up to a new replacement drive. Then I zeroed out the old drive.

    When I put in the new drive again (data only drive, one partition already initialized and formatted NTFS) windows 7 64 pro thought it was a new drive and in disk management did not give it a drive letter, and asked to initialize the drive.

    I was not positive if this would wipe out the drive, but since it was asking if I wanted to initialize it MBR or GPT then I assumed it was basically creating a new MFT.

    I cancelled out of that and ran the free EaseUS Partition recovery program and it immediately found the "missing" partition and all the data is there and fully recoverable. It was recovered pretty quickly, within a few hours with no issues. I am not sure in any way shape or form why Windows 7 would suddenly want to initialize a perfectly good disk drive but it seems like some kind of error/bug to me. I am a computer tech and experienced with computers and just thought I would share this experience since it is related to the initialize disk question. I am sure I am not the only one who will run into this problem.

    FTR: I am using a newer Asrock z77-extreme4 chipset motherboard with Intel Core I7-3770k CPU, the drive in question was plugged into a SATA III port on the motherboard (no external drives or enclosures used) - Intel RST driver up to date as of today's date.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-02-03T07:02:17+00:00

    New unformatted hard disks needs to be initialized.

    Differences between Format and Initialize.

    http://www.sweetwater.com/expert-center/techtips/d--06/18/2001

    Format as a lower level format and initialize as a high level format. A high level format basically clears the drive by zeroing the data that keeps track of where all the data is on the drive. The data is still there (until you write over it), but since the drive's table of contents shows nothing in there it behaves like a blank drive.

    You may receiving an error message:

    External USB drive error "You must initialize the disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it"

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprohardware/thread/2b069948-82e9-49ef-bbb7-e44ec7bfebdb

    Hard drive initialization question

    http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/29199-hard-drive-initialization-question.html

    Hope I could help

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-08-12T11:15:00+00:00

    Hi im having the same problem.. but when i go ahead, I get a 'virtual disk manager' dialogue box stating 'incorrect function'.

    What can I do to fix this?

    Here's the dialogue box:

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