Recover Data from External Hard Drive Not Initialized

Updated on December 02, 2020


Disk 1, unknown, not initialized. Will initializing HDD delete data stored on it? This tutorial tells you how to retrieve data using Remo Recover tool when hard disk is unknown, not initialized, error occurs on Windows / Mac platforms.


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Hard Disk Unknown Not Initialized

External Hard drive (Unknown, Not Initialized) Can anyone help me?

“Hi, when I plugged in my WD external hard drive, it did not appear in My Computer. When I check in Disk Management, it said the disk 1 is unknown, not initialized. It worked well before, I don't know what happened now. I have important data stored on it. Is there any quick solution to restore data from Western Digital hard drive? Please help.”

Many people use the removable storage devices to store data or serve as a backup drive. After using for a long while, there are chances that you may find the external hard drive not showing up in Windows File Explorer. In that case, you can open Disk Management to see its status. Usually, you would see the external hard drive not initialized. One situation is that you can see the exact disk space but it appears as unallocated space. The other situation is that it gives you “Disk 1 Unknown Not Initialized” without showing disk capacity.

Do not worry, you can still easily restore all your data before you decide to initialize it. How? You just need to use the professional hard drive data recovery software from REMO.

Remo Recover - Tool to Recover Data from Not Initialized Hard Drive..!

An easy solution to recover data from not initialized hard disk drive is by using Remo Hard Drive Data Recovery software and then, initialize disk to fix the issue. It is a recommended solution when you have vital files on the external / internal hard drive. The software successfully performs data recovery from uninitialized hard drive partition, recover files from Disk Cleanup, formatted hard drive, RAW hard drive, and other data loss scenarios. It supports recovery of data from NTFS5, NTFS, FAT32, FAT16 and exFAT formatted drives and partitions.

Steps to Recover Data When Hard Disk Shows Unknown not Initialized Error:

Click Download button to get the demo version of Remo Recover Pro Edition for free and install it on your Windows computer. After installing, run the software and follow the step-by-step guidelines to recover data from uninitialized disk.

1. Download and install Remo Recover on your computer.

2. From the main screen select the drive from where you want to recover data. You can click on the Can’t find the drive option if your drive is not recognised on the main screen.

click on the cant find the drive option in order to recover data from HDD that is not initialised

3. Click on the Scan option to initiate the scanning process.

Note: Once the Quick Scan is completed it directly starts Deep Scan. Once the scanning is completed, the tool provides you to view the recovered files in the Tree structure and then you can go to the Tags folder to restore your lost files. You can now Preview the recovered files for free, to verify the success rate of the software.

click on the dynamic recovery view to get back data from HDD not initialised

4. Finally, select the files which you want to save and click on the Recover option.

Steps to initialize HDD to fix hard disk unknown not initialized issue:

  • Right click “My computer” and choose “Manage” to run “Disk Management
  • Right click the disk that you want to initialize
  • Click “Initialize Disk” option

What causes hard disk unknown not initialized?

  • Damaged file system: If your hard disk file system is damaged due to improper operation or virus infection, then your HDD with huge data shows unallocated space.
  • MBR corruption: When MBR is corrupted, the OS fails to access the data on your storage drive and it is likely to show hard drive unknown not initialized error.
  • Bad sectors: If there's an excess number of bad sectors on your hard drive, Disk Management won’t show disk space on the initialized disk.

Apart from the above mentioned scenarios, there might be other reasons too which may result in hard disk errors. By employing the Remo Recover partition recovery utility, you can easily overcome all kinds of hard disk issues and restore your valuable data in just a few clicks.


 

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