Recover Hard drive Shows "Unknown Not Initialized" in Windows

Sometimes when you plug in your external hard drive, it does not show up in My Computer. And sometimes when you double-click a hard drive partition, the system prompts that Disk unknown not initialized. But if you open the Disk Management, they are here and showed as Unknown and Not Initialized. This is a common issues occurs on both internal hard drive and external hard drive. Why the hard drive is not initialized and how to fix it?

Why hard drive is uninitialized?

There are two cases for Disk is not initialized. One case is that you can see the disk capacity in the Disk Management, the other case is it does not show the disk capacity here.

Here are the causes for the disk is not initialized:

1. File system corruption

2. Bad sectors

3. Virus or malware infection

4. FAT corruption

5. Master Boot Record corruption

6. Computer system crash

How to fix the drive is not initialized?

Before you try to fix this uninitialized drive, you should recover the files on this drive first for initialized the drive will let you lost all your data.

1.External hard drive recovery from not initialized partition

First, you need to download and run the Hdata recovery software

Second, click the button of Hard drive lost or crash. Choose the partition which showed as not initialized.

Third, scan this partition and preview the results after scanning.

Fourth, choose another partition or device to save the files recovered from this uninitialized partition.

This video tutorials may be helpful to you

2. Initialize the hard drive

You can open the Disk Management, choose the unknown disk which showed as Not Initialized, choose Initialize from the right-click menu.

The uninitialized external hard disk does not shown up in Disk Management

If the disk is not initialized does not show in the disk management, you can try to fix this problem.

First, you should shut down your computer, and then disconnect the data cable and the power cable. Remove the CMOS battery and then insert it again. Turn off the computer and shut down again to connect the data and power cable. Then you can turn on your computer to know if the problem has been solved.

Second, if you cannot solve this problem by yourself, you’d better send it to a professional datarecovery center for repair. If there is a physical error and cannot be fixed, you should replace the drive.