Windows 10: How to initialize second drive without formatting it?

Discus and support How to initialize second drive without formatting it? in Windows 10 Drivers and Hardware to solve the problem; On Windows 10 Home: I have an old second internal HDD (D:/) from my previous desktop which contains all my personal files that I want to move on to my... Discussion in 'Windows 10 Drivers and Hardware' started by dust10, Nov 25, 2020.

  1. DUST10
    dust10 Win User

    How to initialize second drive without formatting it?


    On Windows 10 Home:

    I have an old second internal HDD (D:/) from my previous desktop which contains all my personal files that I want to move on to my knew desktop. Adding a new drive was easy using disk management which you just had to format the new drive to get it initialized, but for this particular drive I want to initialize it without having to format it. The problem then is when I plug it in the new desktop it will ask me to format it which I don't want to do. Is there a way to initialize the second drive without having to format it?

    Cheers!

    :)
     
    dust10, Nov 25, 2020
    #1
  2. DUST10
    dust10 Win User

    How to initialize second drive without formatting it?

    On Windows 10 Home:

    I have an old second internal HDD (D:/) from my previous desktop which contains all my personal files that I want to move on to my knew desktop. Adding a new drive was easy using disk management which you just had to format the new drive to get it initialized, but for this particular drive I want to initialize it without having to format it. The problem then is when I plug it in the new desktop it will ask me to format it which I don't want to do. Is there a way to initialize the second drive without having to format it?

    Cheers!
     
    dust10, Nov 26, 2020
    #2
  3. SYNTOH
    syntoh Win User
    How to initialize second drive without formatting it?

    Windows says, the drive needs to be formatted.
    This means, the Bios recognised the drive, Diskmanager knows the drive,
    but Windows don't recognise the Partition and/or the Filesystem.

    In such a case "Testdisk" would be your friend.
     
    syntoh, Nov 26, 2020
    #3
  4. FERNANDZ
    Fernandz Win User

    How to initialize second drive without formatting it?

    How To Format A Write Protected Flash Memory ?

    ¿You already tried this one?...

    Run CMD


    1. diskpart
    2. list disk

    Then in the 3º step, put the correct number of disk in the list for the usb flash (if it's listed in disk 3, then you'll have to write select disk 3).

    2. select disk #
    3. clean
    4. create partition primary
    5. select partition 1
    6. active
    7. format fs=fat32
    8. assign
    9. exit

    with that commands you will format the flash drive in fat32, if you have a large drive you can select also "format fs=ntfs" in step 7.

    good luck!
     
    Fernandz, Nov 26, 2020
    #4
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How to initialize second drive without formatting it?

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