Initialize Disk

The Initialize Disk feature initializes a raw disk to either the MBR or GPT disk styles. The default disk style is MBR. Disks must be initialized before they can be formatted and used to store data.

AOMEI Post By AOMEI Updated May 20, 2025

When you add a new disk into your machine, you should initialize it before it can be used for storing and retrieving. In other words, a new added disk must be registered in your operating system by initializing it. This feature allows you to initialize a disk into MBR or GPT mode.

To Initialize Disk

Step 1: Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant and right click on the raw disk which you want to initialize, let's take Disk 2 as an example. Choose "Initialize Disk" in the pop-up menu. 

Disk Initialize

Step 2: In the pop up window, there will be two options for you to choose. You can initialize the disk to MBR or GPT style. Click "OK" to continue.

Choose Disk Style

Step 3: Click "Apply" to wait for process to complete.

Apply Initialize

Notes:

 

FAQs:

Q: I get an error code 45 "Failed to initialize this disk." What can I do?

A: After adding a brand new disk to your computer, you need to initialize it before using it. It will automatically initialize when a brand new disk is partitioned by using Partition Assistant. But there are a few unknown reasons leading to the error.

You can manually initialize the disk with the Windows Disk Management tool and then apply the partition operations. For initializing the disk with indows tool please press Win+R, type diskmgmt.msc in the run dialog box then press Enter to run into the management interface to choose the disk to be initialized. If this doesn’t work yet, you can try to run the command prompt as administrator and type the following commands:

diskpart

List disk

Select disk X

Clean

Create partition primary

Format quick fs=ntfs

exit

* Initialize disk will erase all data on the disk. Please make sure you have already backed up your important data.

If it still fails, do the following things:

  1. Checking physical connections
  2. Updating/reinstallingdrivers
  3. Checking disk health
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