1. Go to the Start menu button and click on it. Wait for the Start menu to appear.
3. Once found, click on the Computer Management icon and wait for the Computer
Management window to load
4. In the Computer Management window, on the left pane, look for the Disk Management
sentence. It should be under the Storage main branch. Once found, click on it once.
Wait for the window to change to to Disk Management.
5. Once Disk Management is loaded you will see a list of your disks. Look for the
disk you have recently plugged into your computer. Make sure the size of the disk
matches the disk you had connected to the comptuer. Most of the time that disk should be
marked with a red circle and an X inside of it, meaning it is not an initilized disk.
7. After clicking Initialize, a new pop-up window wil appear, titled Initizlie Disk.
8. In that window, mark the the disk which should be initilized. Make sure that the disk number
is the same as the one on the previous list.
11. The disk is now initialized and ready to be used
12. In the next step we will fortmat the disk to be able to start storing data on it.
15. Click Next.
16. choose the desirble size of the partition. In the case of this article, we
will use all of the available size of the disk to create the partition. Click Next.
17. Here, choose the desired drive letter for your new partition. In the case of this
article we will remain with the pre-chosen option of E. Click Next
18. Here, you can choose whether to format the new partition of to leave it be to be done later on.
Either way, in order to store data on the partition it has to be formatted on one way or another.
In the case of this article we will choose to format the partition. Therefore we will choose
the second option; "Formart this volume with the following settings:".
19. After choosing the latter mentioned option, we will be presented with the following options:
File system, Allocation unit size, Volume label, Perform a quick format and Enable file and folder compression.
20. In the case of this article we will keep the default pre-picked options and use them:
File system: NTFS
Allocation unit size: Default
Volume Label: New Volume
Perform a quick format - yes
Enable filre and folder compression - yes.
21. A bit of an explanation about these options:
File system: NTFS, exFAT or FAT32 - the most commonly used is NTFS, exFAT is used mostly for very large external volumes.
FAT32 is used with older systems
Allocation unit size: Allocation unit size (also known as cluster size) is the smallest block of disk space that a file system (like NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT) uses to store data on a drive.
Volume label: merely a name for your new volume/partition to be identified better and faster.
Perform a quick format: Saves time in preparing new volumes. A full format takes a lot of time as it is so
in bigger volumes it would take even more time.
Quick Format:
What it does:
Deletes the file system’s index (the “table of contents”).
Marks all sectors as empty, but does not actually erase the data.
Simply recreates a blank file system (e.g., NTFS, FAT32, exFAT).
Data recovery: Data can still be recovered using recovery tools until it’s overwritten.
Time required: Very fast — usually seconds or minutes, even on large drives.
Use case:
When you’re reusing a healthy drive.
When you’re in a hurry and don’t need a deep clean.
Full Format:
What it does:
Deletes the file system’s index and checks every sector on the disk for errors (bad sectors).
Writes zeros (or other patterns) to the entire disk in modern Windows versions, effectively erasing data.
Data recovery: Very difficult — data is overwritten, so recovery is unlikely.
Time required: Much longer — can take hours, depending on drive size.
Use case:
When you’re preparing a new drive for first use.
When the drive has had issues or bad sectors.
Enable folder and file compression: Available only in NTFS file system. Compresses files and folders to save space.
Good for saving space, not good for performance.
24. Wait for the Disk Management app to perform its job. Once it's done a side notification
will appear on the bottom right side of the screen declaring a new volume has been found by the operating system.
25. You can double check the volume's presence by going to This PC and checking it out.
