If the disk is listed as Offline, first right-click it and select Online. In Disk Management, right-click the disk you want to initialize, and then click Initialize Disk (shown here). If you prefer using PowerShell, use the initialize-disk cmdlet instead. Here’s how to initialize a new disk using Disk Management.

Instead we recommend troubleshooting the disk to see if you can read the files – see A disk’s status is Not Initialized or the disk is missing entirely. Warning: If your disk already has files on it that you care about, don’t initialize it – you’ll lose all the files. Initializing a disk erases everything on it and prepares it for use by Windows, after which you can format it and then store files on it. You can only initialize a drive that’s not yet formatted. Initialize new disks. If you add a brand new disk to your PC and it doesn’t show up in File Explorer, you might need to add a drive letter, or initialize it before using it. Here’s some info on things you can do using Disk Management: Disk Management in Windows helps you perform advanced storage tasks like initializing a new drive and extending or shrinking volumes.

Diskmanagement windows 10