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In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll show you how to initialize and format a disk using Disk Management.
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When attaching disks to a server or workstation running Windows, they don’t automatically appear in Windows Explorer. You need to bring disks online, initialize, and format them before they can be used. Disk Management is a tool in all versions of Windows that allows you to manage disks attached to the device.
In this article, I’m going to use Hyper-V to run Windows Server 2012 R2 in a virtual machine (VM). I’ve already installed the operating system, and as part of the process, a system disk is added by default. But I want to add an additional disk, so I used Hyper-V manager to add an additional disk to the VM. For more information on working with disks in Hyper-V, see Hyper-V Virtual Machine Storage Controllers Explained on the Petri IT Knowledgebase.
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Once the disk is attached to the server or VM, you need to log in to Windows and open Disk Management. The instructions that follow also apply to Windows 10, and most other supported versions of Windows:
Disk Management in Windows Server 2012 R2 (Image Credit: Russell Smith)
In the lower half of the Disk Management console, you will see a graphical representation of the disks attached to the system. You should see one disk that is labeled Offline.
For more information about MBR and GPT, see Windows GPT Disks – Is Bigger Really Better? on Petri IT Knowledgebase.
The New Simple Volume Wizard in Disk Management (Image Credit: Russell Smith)
The partition will be formatted and the status should change to Healthy. Close Disk Management and open Windows Explorer (WIN+E) and you will see your new disk in the list of available drives.
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In this article, I showed you how to bring a disk online, initialize it, assign a drive letter, and create and format a simple volume using Disk Management.
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