Managing Disks
Troubleshoot with Disk Management
Troubleshooting Disks That Fail to Initialize
- When you add a new disk to your computer in Windows 7, the disk
does not initially contain a disk signature, which is required for the disk to be recognized by Windows. Disk signatures are at the end of the sector
marker on the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the drive.
- When you install a new drive and run the Disk Management utility,
a wizard starts and lists all new disks that have been detected.
The disk signature is written through this process. If you cancel the
wizard before the disk signature is written, you see the disk status Not
Initialized. To initialize a disk, right-click the disk you want to initialize
and select the Initialize Disk option.
- As you have seen, Disk Management can be a useful tool in your
computer management arsenal. If you decide to format your partition or
volume using NTFS, you then receive added benefits like compression,
encryption, quotas, and security.