HDD "Not Initialized"

[TwentyGaugeHigh]

I've been having lots of trouble with a new HDD in my Asus laptop. I have a Seagate 500gb HDD that is only showing 18.6gb of unallocated space during the Windows 8 install. I cannot format the drive and deleting partitions only leaves me with 18.6gb.

I was recently told that the drive is not initialized, but I don't know what that means nor do I know how to fix that. What is going on?

 

[magneezo]

Have you downloaded/tried DiscWizard?
http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/discwizard/

A disc that used to ship with the Seagate HDD is now left up to you to find online
Hope this helps

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there TwentyGaugeHigh,

That is unpleasant.

One thing you can do is to go to BIOS and see if the drive is recognized over there as 18.6 GB. If this is the case, then there's a chance that the drive is faulty.
In case it is recognized as having its full capacity, you can try to reformat the drive before the installation.

Once you are in Windows setup:
- shift+F10 to bring up the command line.
- diskpart [enter]
- list disk [enter]
- select drive [number] [enter]
- clean all [enter]
- create partition primary [enter]
- select partition 1 [enter]
- active [enter]
- format fs=ntfs [enter]
- assign [enter]
- exit [enter]
- exit [enter]

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[TwentyGaugeHigh]

Hi there TwentyGaugeHigh,

That is unpleasant.

One thing you can do is to go to BIOS and see if the drive is recognized over there as 18.6 GB. If this is the case, then there's a chance that the drive is faulty.
In case it is recognized as having its full capacity, you can try to reformat the drive before the installation.

Once you are in Windows setup:
- shift+F10 to bring up the command line.
- diskpart [enter]
- list disk [enter]
- select drive [number] [enter]
- clean all [enter]
- create partition primary [enter]
- select partition 1 [enter]
- active [enter]
- format fs=ntfs [enter]
- assign [enter]
- exit [enter]
- exit [enter]

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

The 18.5gb space was still showing in the command console. I'd hate to think this is a faulty drive. Someone recommend that I plug it into a working computer, right click it, and then select initialize. Is this a possible soultion?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Yeah, you can attach it to another system. The HDD should be initialized though, as it shows some storage space.
Once you install it on another system, you need to go to Disk Management and see how the drive appears over there. See if there is some unallocated space.
In case there is, you can repartition and reformat the drive.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD