Windows

To set up a new hard drive with raw space on Windows 10:

Open Start.
Search for Create and format hard disk partitions and click the top result to open the Disk Management console.
Right-click the hard drive marked as "Unknown" and "Not Initialized" and select the Initialize Disk option.

Under the "Select disks" section, check the disk to initialize.
Select the partition style:

Master Boot Record (MBR) for hard drives smaller than 2TB in size
GUID Partition Table (GPT) for hard drives larger than 2TB in size

Click the OK button.
Right-click the Unallocated space part of the storage, and select the New Simple Volume option.

Click the Next button.
Under the "Simple volume size in MB" section, leave the default size if you plan to use the entire hard drive to store files. Otherwise, specify the amount of space in megabytes you want to allocate for the partition.

10. Click the Next button.

11. Use the "Assign the following drive letter" drop-down menu to select a new drive letter.

Add a volume label - “Data”

Click the Next button.
Use the "File system" drop-down menu, and select the NTFS option (recommended for Windows 10).

15. Use the "Allocation unit size" drop-down menu, and select the Default option.

16. Type a descriptive name for the storage in the "Value label" field.

17. Check the Perform a quick format option.

Quick tip: Clear the quick format option to perform a full format that includes a disk check. If you use the full format option, remember that it can take many hours to complete depending on the size.

18. Clear the Enable file and folder compression option.

19. Click the Next button.

20. Click the Finish button.

RESULT

After you complete the steps, the new hard drive will be initialized, partitioned, and properly formatted.

Linux

Formatting the Volume

At this point, the Volume is only attached to the instance in question. If the Volume was created with Volume Source set to "No source, empty volume," we still need to format the drive.

To format the volume, take note of where it is attached, and run:

ubuntu@dev-doc-1:~$ sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/vdb
mke2fs 1.44.1 (24-Mar-2018)
Creating filesystem with 13107200 4k blocks and 3276800 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 24db0256-4a5f-458d-8f95-36b28fa6a352
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
   32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 
   4096000, 7962624, 11239424
Allocating group tables: done                            
Writing inode tables: done                            
Creating journal (65536 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done   
ubuntu@dev-doc-1:~$

Mounting the Volume

To be used, the last step is to mount the drive. In this case, I will make a directory at the root level called data and mount the volume there:

sudo mkdir /data
sudo mount /dev/vdb /data

You will now be able to copy or write your data to the 50GB Volume mounted at /data:

ubuntu@dev-doc-1:~$ df -H
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            2.1G     0  2.1G   0% /dev
tmpfs           414M  3.0M  411M   1% /run
/dev/vda1        32G  2.0G   29G   7% /
tmpfs           2.1G     0  2.1G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.3M     0  5.3M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs           2.1G     0  2.1G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           414M     0  414M   0% /run/user/1000
/dev/vdb         53G   55M   50G   1% /data

Permanently mounting the Volume

Unfortunately, that mount will not persist over a reboot. The data will be safe, but the mount will disappear and you will need to run the sudo mount command again.

To prevent this, we can make the mount permanent. To do this, we will add an entry to the configuration file that controls the mounted volumes, /etc/fstab. Using the text editor of your choice, add the following line to the bottom of the file: /dev/vdb /data auto defaults 0 0.

You can now rest easy knowing that your Volume will always be mounted at /data when you reboot your instance.

Change the permission of the new drive

Change the owner of the new drive so that the user can access it without sudo permission: