- Oct 25, 2014
- 15
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- 4,520
I recently bought a new SSD(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N9FRJX0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), it was not recognized in the file system when I first plugged it in via USB 3.0 using this bad boy(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HJZJI84/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1).
Decided to do a Google search to find out how, came across some threads that you need Ubuntu Live CD, or third party software to format the drive. Don't get me wrong getting a live usb is free(I've done it many times), but it just takes time and I was on the cliff of insanity when I heard that someone had to pay to format the new drive. After playing around with Windows Disk Management which is provided by VERITAS Software Corporation, I came across something spectacular. I first had to "Initialize" the disk so to speak...
...using GPT(right click on the gray box where it says Disk (#) in bold, after "Initialize" GPT MBR will pop up),
also if Disk Management doesn't show the external drive then try doing a Rescan Disks command which can be found in the "Action" button up top.
Now you may ask, how to access Disk Management easily? On Keyboard hold the Windows key and hit the key "R" in order to open up the Run window.
<!--Make sure you know what your external drive is, in my case it was the one that has the black stripe, with one big box. while the main one has three little boxes with blue stripes.-->
So now what you want to do is right-click on the bigger Window to the right of the gray box and select "New Simple Volume" which will lead you through the process of formatting your drive to NTFS so then it can be recognized in the Windows file system to be used.
After clicking the next button with the intro, you come to how much of this drive do you want to use, in my case all of my external drive capacity which is 114344 MB or roughly 111.67 GB. and even though this is a 120GB drive keep in mind that some of the listed capacity on a flash storage drive is used for formatting and other functions and is not available for data storage. In 5yr old terms, having less space on your drive than the big 120 number means your drive will work if the people at the factory did their job the right way. Ok, so enough of the satire, on the to the next step, which is assigning a drive letter! In my case I selected Z because I like Zebras... no I just like the letter Z because I know it's on the outside of the spectrum, since my main hard drive is listed as C. Next you want to select to format your drive to NTFS(and for you folks with more experience I think you can take it from here) in order to use it. My most favorite part of this whole mission was naming(Volume label) the drive, which you can label to your heart's content(actually the fact that it took less than what all the other forums suggested is what my most favorite part was; sarcasm on the whole labeling thing, but in the days of "No I want this, this, this, without that in my coffee" you all get the picture). I selected the quick format because I know this drive shouldn't have had any previous data on it from the factory and deselecting this option means a much much longer wait time in order to format, in cases of my 8gb flash drive, it's 1 minute compared to 10 minutes, respectively. I just left "Default" for the Allocation Unit Size setting. Next up a summary of all the settings that you selected, and after hitting next Disk Management will works it's rah rah and you'll be on your way thinking, man I wonder if Apple has the same issues(which I don't know the answer to that question but, you get the picture with today's Apple elite folk). Have a wonderful experience.
Decided to do a Google search to find out how, came across some threads that you need Ubuntu Live CD, or third party software to format the drive. Don't get me wrong getting a live usb is free(I've done it many times), but it just takes time and I was on the cliff of insanity when I heard that someone had to pay to format the new drive. After playing around with Windows Disk Management which is provided by VERITAS Software Corporation, I came across something spectacular. I first had to "Initialize" the disk so to speak...
...using GPT(right click on the gray box where it says Disk (#) in bold, after "Initialize" GPT MBR will pop up),
also if Disk Management doesn't show the external drive then try doing a Rescan Disks command which can be found in the "Action" button up top.
Now you may ask, how to access Disk Management easily? On Keyboard hold the Windows key and hit the key "R" in order to open up the Run window.
<!--Make sure you know what your external drive is, in my case it was the one that has the black stripe, with one big box. while the main one has three little boxes with blue stripes.-->
So now what you want to do is right-click on the bigger Window to the right of the gray box and select "New Simple Volume" which will lead you through the process of formatting your drive to NTFS so then it can be recognized in the Windows file system to be used.
After clicking the next button with the intro, you come to how much of this drive do you want to use, in my case all of my external drive capacity which is 114344 MB or roughly 111.67 GB. and even though this is a 120GB drive keep in mind that some of the listed capacity on a flash storage drive is used for formatting and other functions and is not available for data storage. In 5yr old terms, having less space on your drive than the big 120 number means your drive will work if the people at the factory did their job the right way. Ok, so enough of the satire, on the to the next step, which is assigning a drive letter! In my case I selected Z because I like Zebras... no I just like the letter Z because I know it's on the outside of the spectrum, since my main hard drive is listed as C. Next you want to select to format your drive to NTFS(and for you folks with more experience I think you can take it from here) in order to use it. My most favorite part of this whole mission was naming(Volume label) the drive, which you can label to your heart's content(actually the fact that it took less than what all the other forums suggested is what my most favorite part was; sarcasm on the whole labeling thing, but in the days of "No I want this, this, this, without that in my coffee" you all get the picture). I selected the quick format because I know this drive shouldn't have had any previous data on it from the factory and deselecting this option means a much much longer wait time in order to format, in cases of my 8gb flash drive, it's 1 minute compared to 10 minutes, respectively. I just left "Default" for the Allocation Unit Size setting. Next up a summary of all the settings that you selected, and after hitting next Disk Management will works it's rah rah and you'll be on your way thinking, man I wonder if Apple has the same issues(which I don't know the answer to that question but, you get the picture with today's Apple elite folk). Have a wonderful experience.
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