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Initialize disks with GParted Live

Last modified: 2012-05-10 09:57:14 EEST

There are times when you try to add an external or internal hard disk drive or flash drive and Disk Management console fails to initialize the new disk with error "The system cannot find the file specified". This can happen in Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7. This error does not mean that your (new) disk is unusable or broken.

Luckily, Linux is once again very useful in such cases. GParted Live is a bootable CD that allows creating and formatting partitions. As usual, nothing will be written to system disk unless you explicitly require that.

Downloading GParted Live

Open GParted download page and click the link right after "Looking for the latest version?".

Save the file to a folder you can locate easily (for example, Downloads folder in Windows Vista and 7; My Documents folder in Windows XP).

Burning the downloaded image to a CD

Use CDBurnerXP to create the bootable CD in Windows XP and Vista. In Windows 7, use the Windows Disc Image Burner instead.

Instructions for CDBurnerXP in Windows XP and Windows Vista

Right-click the downloaded file, select Open With, CDBurnerXP.
Insert a blank CD-R or CD-RW.
Next, make sure both Finalize disc and Verify data after burning options are selected. Then click Burn disc.

After the disc creation and verification is complete, click Close. If you encounter any problems, see the Create disc from ISO image article for more detailed instructions.

Instructions for Windows Disc Image Burner in Windows 7

Right-click the downloaded file and select Burn disc image (or Open With and Windows Disc Image Burner).
Insert a blank CD-R or CD-RW.
Click to activate the Verify disc after burning option. Then click Burn.

After the disc creation and verification is complete, click Close.

Booting from GParted Live bootable CD

First, make sure your PC is set to boot from CD - read the Computer boot order article for instructions.
Then, connect your external drive that Windows was unable to initialize. For internal disks, you do not need any additional steps.

After your computer starts from GParted Live CD, you are presented with the following menu.
In most cases, using the first option - GParted Live (Default settings) - works fine. This really affect graphics card drivers only.
Press Enter key to start GParted Live.

If you run into trouble with blank or scrambled screen in the later steps, press Reset/Restart button of your computer or hold down Power button for more than 5 seconds. Then, in the same menu, press Arrow Down key to select Other modes of GParted Live and press Enter key to confirm your selection.

Then select GParted Live (Safe graphic settings, vga=normal) with Arrow Down key and press Enter.

Please stand by while Linux does its magic detecting all hardware. You may see several lines ending with "(Warning)", this is normal.

Next, a keymap selection dialog appears. This defines the layout of keyboard; US English is the default one. As you do not really need keyboard during running GParted, press Enter to accept the Don't touch keymap option.

Next, press Enter key again to accept the default language (US English) for GParted. As you can see, the default selection is in square brackets - "[]".

And then press Enter again to run GParted in a graphical environment called X-Window.

X will start and open GParted automatically. Please note that sometimes it might take several minutes for disks and partitions to appear in the program.

Partitioning and formatting disks with GParted

The very first step is to select the correct disk from the menu on the right.

Linux uses its own naming for different disks and partitions - /dev/sda is the first hard disk, /dev/sdb is either the second hard disk or a removable drive, etc.
If a disk has more than one partition on it, then the first partition on the first disk is named /dev/sda1, the second partition on the same disk is /dev/sda2, etc.

Here, /dev/sda is most probably the hard disk where Windows is installed on. Do not select this one!

As you're trying to format a brand new disk, you can distinguish it easily by the gray area with "unallocated" written on it. Also, use the disk size hints to find the disk Windows was unable to initialize - MiB means "megabytes" and GiB means "gigabytes".

In case you are unable to find your external disk, unplug it, wait for a few seconds and plug it back in. Then open GParted menu and click Refresh Devices; or use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+R.

After selecting the correct disk, right-click the gray "unallocated" area on the top and select New.

In the Create new Partition dialog, select a suitable type from File system combo box.
fat32 is the best option for carrying around music and smaller video files and mixed use on older Windows versions (such as Windows 95/98/Me), home and car multimedia systems, etc.
FAT32 partitions do not need initialization, so it is a great workaround! Please note that you cannot copy or create files larger than 4 gigabytes to a FAT32 disk! But you can later convert the disk to NTFS format without any problems or losing data!
ntfs is the best option if you need to create and copy large (over 4 gigabytes) files, but it is not usable in older Windows versions or multimedia systems. NTFS partitions might need initialization.
Do not consider using other file system types than FAT32 or NTFS! Windows is unable to handle Linux/Unix file systems, such as ext2, hfs, reiser4, etc.

All other options are fine by default, so click Add.

Next, you need to commit the changes. Click Apply button on GParted toolbar. In case you just discovered you were editing the wrong disk, there's the Undo button, too!

GParted will warn you that editing partitions can cause loss of data. Yes, creating and formatting a new partition will erase all data on the new disk - but as it was unformatted anyway, it is no problem.
Click Apply again.

The partitioning and formatting can take several minutes, depending on the size of your new disk. Stand by until it is completed.

After the disk is ready for use, click Close.

Double-click the Exit icon on the top left (you do not need to close GParted) of Desktop.

Select Reboot in the Exit dialog and then click OK.

Linux will shut down its graphical environment and stop all processes. After your optical drive ejects the GParted Live CD, remove it from its tray and press Enter key to restart your computer.

Your new disk should now be usable in Windows!

For NTFS disks, you might need to open Disk Management again to initialize the newly formatted disk. This time it should work flawlessly.

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