How to Initialize an SSD in Windows 10/11? -[Easy Guide]

SSD or Solid-state drives are the best storage devices to use in most computers. It is quite different from a traditional Hard Disk Drive (HDD) because of its small storage capacities. Some features, like fast, lightweight, and use of flash memory distinguish it from hard disk drives. If you have recently changed the drive of your laptop to an SSD, it is important to initialize it first.

To use a brand-new SSD, you need to perform initialization. This will prepare your SSD for your operating system and makes you able to store files on it. It is important to note that you can only initialize a hard drive that is not formatted yet. Here, in this article, we have mentioned how to initialize SSD in Windows 10/11.

What Does Initializing an SSD Mean?

Before knowing the methods to initialize the SSD of your Windows system, it is important to know why you need it. Initializing an SSD erases all the data on the disks. It is OK if you have to initialize a new SSD, but you must think twice before initializing an SSD that has some data.

Initializing an SSD is not a common operation for disk management, but you can perform that in the following situations:

• Your SSD is brand new. In such cases, you need to initialize it so that you can use it after creating partitions on the disk.
• The SSD is not appearing in the File Explorer. In this case, you have to initialize or assign a drive letter for this SSD.
• The SSD is displaying a message indicating “Disk unknown not initialized” in Windows Disk Management.
• You encounter some system errors that can be recovered by an initialization process for the SSD.

Before you perform the initialization of your SSD, it is important to back up the disk to another storage device. This prevents any sort of data loss from your storage device.

How to Initialize SSD Windows 10/11?

There are several methods by which you can initialize SSD on Windows 10/11. The disk initialization doesn’t require many technologies. It is important to know the exact method of how to initialize a hard drive or SSD safely. After performing the initialization process, you should use professional data recovery software to recover all its data. If you want to know effective methods to initialize SSD, just keep reading this section. In this part, you will learn different methods to initialize SSD in Windows 11, 10, 8, and 7. Let’s check each one of them in detail.

Method 01: Initialize SSD Via Disk Management

The easiest method to initialize SSD in Windows is to use Disk Management. You just have to add a new SSD and open the utility too, after which the Initialize Disk window will appear automatically. The prompt indicates that you need to initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it. All you have to do is:

Step 1: Press Windows + X keys to open the Start menu. Choose Disk Management to open the built-in utility tool.

Step 2: Select and right-click the target SSD and choose to Initialize Disk option.

Step 3: Now, select MBR or GPT from the pop-up window. Click the OK button to confirm the operation.

If you have an old SSD that has been partitioned and has data stored on it, then there is no Initialize Disk option for it. In such cases, you can use the Diskpart option. To know more about this, apply the steps mentioned in the next method.

Method 02: Initialize SSD Via Diskpart

Just like Disk Management, Diskpart is another Windows basic utility by which you can manage your partitions and disks using command lines. This tool is known as more powerful than Disk Management and can help you in performing more operations in comparison to the latter one.

Step 1: Press the Windows + R keys simultaneously to open the Run window.

Step 2: Type cmd in the search box and click the OK button. This will open Command Prompt.

Step 3: Type diskpart in the command prompt window and press Enter key.

Step 4: Then, enter the following commands one by one to clean the SSD. Press Enter key after each command.

• List disk: This command list all the installed disks on your device.
• Select disk *: In place of *, you need to provide the number of the disk that you want to initialize.
• Clean: This will help you to remove any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk.

Once the Clean command is run for the SSD, the first 1 MB and the last 1 MB of the disk will be emptied. This means that any disk formatting that has been previously applied to the disk will be erased.

Method 03: Initialize SSD Using Third-party Disk Manager Software

If you want to initialize a used SSD using the built-in tool, it is important to ensure the commands are entered correctly. It is not easy to remember the commands. In such cases, you can use a professional third-party partition recovery tool for help.

There are several data recovery software that you can use for this purpose, but we recommend using Stellar Data Recovery Professional. The software allows you to recover deleted files from HDDs, SSDs, USBs, and optical media. You can use this tool to restore data from formatted, encrypted, or corrupted drives from Windows 11, 10, 8 & 7 systems.

How Stellar Data Recovery Professional Recovers Data?

It is an all-in-one professional data recovery software by which you can easily recover data from internal & external hard drives and SSD. All you have to do is:

• Firstly, you need to select the type of data that you have to recover. Click the ‘Next’ button.
• Now, choose the folder location or drive volume and then click ‘Scan.’
• At last, select files after the scan and click the ‘Recover’ button. This will start saving the recovered data at the desired location.

Wrapping Up:

 

Hope, the methods mentioned in this article help you in answering how to initialize SSD in Windows 10/11. In general, these are the only three options to initialize a hard drive. You can use Disk Management, Command Prompt, and Windows partition management software for this purpose. Once your driver is properly initialized, you can use the Stellar data recovery Professional tool to get all its data. The software is easy to use for beginners as well as experts.