How to Initialize and Format a SSD in Windows?

To initialize and format your drive, There are 2 main methods.

Method 1. Disk Management

• Windows 7: Click the ‘Start’ button, right-click ‘Computer’, and select ‘Manage’. A Computer Management window will open displaying 3 panes. Off to your left, you’ll see 3 (or more) selections. If you cannot see the branching options, click on the small triangle next to Storage. Disk Management should appear beneath it. Select Disk Management.
• Windows 8/10/11: Right click on the 'Start' button or on your keyboard press 'Windows Key' + the letter 'X', and select Disk Management in the windows that pops up.

You may receive a message stating that a drive isn’t initialized and that you need to initialize it in order for it to be used. If you do not see this message, right-click the square box that displays your SSD information (ex. Disk 1, Disk 2, etc.). It should give you the option to initialize the drive. You’ll see a pop-up to continue. Select ‘MBR’ or 'GPT' depending on your current drive's partition style and continue forward. Once initialization is complete, you’ll be ready to use the drive.

You can verify the partition style of your primary drive by right-clicking the square box that displays your drive information and select Properties. Select the Volumes tab and verify where it says 'partition style'.

Once the drive is Initialized, you will see a large unallocated space in the rectangle to the right of the Disk # that is your SSD. Right click on the unallocated space and select 'New Simple Volume' from the options that come up. This will open the New Simple Volume Wizard. From here, all you have to do is press Next until you get to Finish. Once you press Finish, it will Format the SSD and assign it a drive letter.

Method 2. DiskPart

1. Open CMD, Powershell, or Terminal, or if you are in a Windows PE environment to install a Windows OS, press Shift + F10 to bring up CMD.
2. Type diskpart and press Enter.
3. Type the following command to list all the connected drives and press Enter: list disk
4. You will see a list of numbered disks starting from 0. Confirm the drive you want to work on and type the following command: sel disk # (instead of #, put the number of the disk you want to select. Also you can type out the word select or use sel for short)
5. If you have a brand new drive that's never been used, go to step 6. If this a drive you want to wipe and reinitialize and format, type the following command and press enter: clean (you can also use clean all, but this takes longer as it wipes every block of the drive. The higher in capacity your device is, the longer it will take.)
6. Now you have to select the Partition Style you want the drive to use:
    6a. If your BIOS is set to legacy and you want to use this drive as a boot drive, type convert MBR and press enter.
    6b. If your BIOS is set to UEFI, and you want to use this drive as a boot drive, or the drive is bigger than 2TB type Convert GPT and press enter.
7. Type the following command to create a new partition create part pri (you can type part or partition, and you can type pri or primary).
8. Type the following command to select the new primary partition: sel part 1
9. If you use GPT, skip this step. If you used MBR, type the following command to make the partition active: active
10. Type the following command to format the partition using the NTFS file system, set a drive label, and press Enter: format fs=NTFS label=name* quick (* for label, put the name of what you want the partition to be called in windows)
11. Type the following command to assign a letter and make the drive available on File Explorer, and press Enter: assign letter=driveletter* (*enter a letter you want the drive letter to be.)

If you continue to experience problems with your drive, please contact us via email at samsungmemorysupport@sea.samsung.com or call us at 1-800-726-7864 and we will assist you as best as we can.