New external hard drive formatting question.

I just installed a new unformatted 1.5 Tb hard drive in a miniStack v2.5 that I need to format to NTFS. Windows 7 recognizes the miniStack v2.5 but not the HDD. I went to Disk Management & it lists all my formatted HDDs but another window popped up that says; "You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Management can access it." Under a window "Select disks", Disk 3 is highlighted in blue & checked. Also there are 2 options for partitioning style; MBR (Master Boot Record) as default & GPT (GUID Partition Table). I will be using this drive on a XP laptop & GPT isn't recommended on older versions of Windows, so probably MBR is best.

I presume Disk 3 is the new 1.5 Tb drive but how can I be sure before wiping all data from a used drive? &

Virtually certain you are correct, but can you post a pic of Disk Management??

Your other disks are probably numbered 0 and 1?

Hi ignatzatsonic!
As this "You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Management can access it." window pops up, it prohibits scrolling down the Disk Management window until it is closed. Once closed, I & scrolled down & could see Disk 3 is indeed the 1.5Tb disk. It's now initialized as MBR & I just need to format it.

I found a tutorial & it's formatting to NTFS. Thanks!

Can you dig around anywhere in Windows and find a mention of "Disk 3" that might give more identifiable info?? Maybe not.

Could you run a prog such as Belarc or Speccy that might ID the new drive?

I can't imagine that one of your other 2 drives would suddenly be named Disk 3.

Were I you and I am not, depending on your level of anxiety:

I would disconnect my data drive, leaving only your SSD connected. That ensures that you could not accidentally re-format your data drive.

Make a fresh image of C so you can restore it in case you accidentally re-format it.

Then go for it.

I'd try all possible ways of confirming what "Disk 3" is before proceeding.

GARoss said:

I found a tutorial & it's formatting to NTFS. Thanks!

I see you have a new cooler and a fan controller. Quite the fancy-shmansy setup.

What? No overclock with that Tuniq????

Are your other drives the same size. The unformatted drive will obviously have the large size listed. Just an hour ago I did the same thing for a 1TB hdd through eSata. But since I'm running Win 7 I chose GPT.

ignatzatsonic said:

GARoss said:

I found a tutorial & it's formatting to NTFS. Thanks!

I see you have a new cooler and a fan controller. Quite the fancy-shmansy setup.

What? No overclock with that Tuniq????

So far so good. All is VERY quiet; just the way I like it. Overclocking is on the to-do list but I've been very busy this summer. I want to take my time to do it right.

For whatever reason, Gigabyte MB controls the speed of the CPU fan only; not the other case fans. The Sunbeam PL-RS-3 Rheosmart 3 Fan Controller allows full ventilation with the case fans when needed & turned down (or off) when not rendering video. The CPU fan is plugged into the MBs CPU_FAN. All is good!

metalmania31 said:

Are your other drives the same size. The unformatted drive will obviously have the large size listed. Just an hour ago I did the same thing for a 1TB hdd through eSata. But since I'm running Win 7 I chose GPT.

No. C drive is a 120Gb SSD, E & F are 300Gb. The new HHD is 1.5Tb.

To explain a bit more, when I first opened Disk Management a window open that said "You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Management can access it." With this window open I couldn't see all of the disk info in Disk Management nor could I scroll to view it. Once I closed the initialize a disk window, I could scroll down & Disk 3 was clearly identified as the new disk. I initialize a Disk 3 & proceeded to format it as NTFS & label it as G drive. The tutorial I followed recommended not using the "Quick format method" so it took nearly 14 hours to format! Just a guess but being an USB external drive may be the reason for taking so long to format. It's formatted & I'm happy!