I purchased a Western Digital 12TB WD Red Plus NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 GB/s, CMR, 512 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD120EFGX.
My intention was to install this as a second drive in a new Dell Win 11 Tower Plus (an EBT2250) but while I can see the drive in Device Manager, it is otherwise inaccessible. So not my best choice, but is there a was I can format it and get it to work outside a NAS enviroment and use it as a second drive in the pc itself?
Format Definition - What are the meanings of “format?”
My suggestion, go back to WD and read all the information that is provided for the disk you purchased.
High-Capacity HDDs for PCs, NAS, Gaming, Data Centers, and AI Data Cycles | Western Digital
You mostly likely need to partition (initialize) it first, then format. Do this in Disk Management.
Honestly, in all the years I’ve dug into towers…adding/replacing drives, memory, you name it…I’ve never had to use Disk Management so it never crossed my mind. But I found and opened it, partitioned and formatted the drive. Drive is a little noisy, but it works fine. Thanks for putting up with my “less than informed” questions!
No worries.
Most of the times I’ve done this, I’ve gotten a “popup” that says something about initializing the drive. Once in a while I get a “blank look” back that suggests “So what? Now what?”
A quick trip into disk management (or a 3rd party partition tool) does the job.
Open DiskManager and note the disk that needs to be setup
Open an elevated PowerShell prompt
run:
diskpart
select disk x
clean
where x is the disk number
then in diskmanager you can partition and format the disk for desktop use
Your WD Red Plus can definitely work as a regular internal drive. Since Device Manager recognizes it, the connections are fine - it just needs initialization and formatting. Open Disk Management by right-clicking “This PC,” selecting “Manage,” then “Disk Management.” You’ll see the 12TB drive as unallocated space. Initialize it using GPT format (required for drives over 2TB), create a new simple volume with the full capacity, and format it as NTFS. WD Red drives actually work well in desktop computers since they’re built for continuous operation and are often more reliable than standard consumer drives. The NAS designation simply means they’re optimized for network storage, but they function normally in regular PCs. If you don’t see the drive in Disk Management, check that both the SATA data and power cables are securely connected. Once formatted, the drive will appear in File Explorer and work like any other internal storage drive.
