- Disk 1 Unknown Not Initialized External Hard Drive Windows 10
- Disk 1 Unknown Not Initialized External Hard Drive Enclosure
I have a internal 3.5' HDD WD Black 2 TB and try to hook it up in the PC but it doesnt not appear anymore in My Computer. It was working few weeks ago. When opening Disk Management it says the disk is not initialized and it didnt state how many GB available on the hard disk (unallocated). Disk Management tried to initialized the hard disk and it pops out the following errors:
1. Virtual Disk Manager: Incorrect Function
and
2. Virtual Disk Manager: The device is not ready.
I have also tried using a powered USB cable and also connected in directly to the MoBo via SATA but the problem still persist.
I also ran disk part and it shows Disk 3 and Disk 4 as both online but both having size of 0 B
Below is the screen shot of Disk Management. When i right click on the HDD, there are four functions: Initialize Disk, Offline, Properties and Help however the the Initialize Disk function is greyed out.
I have Partition Wizard 9.1 and the attached picture below is the screenshot of the main GUI. It shows bad disk on the particular hard disk
I tried running Partition Recovery Wizard on the mentioned HDD and it shows a partition of only 512 Bytes but none of my files are visible (no preview)
I just need to retrieve the files in the Hard disk as it contains important files and pictures that havent been backed up. Any help and suggestions are welcomed! Thanks
Summary :
There are lots of disk problems that will cause damage to the disk partition layout and disk data. For instance, a hard disk drive may become unknown (unallocated, not initialized, RAW, and Offline) suddenly. At this time, users need to start data recovery before doing anything else.
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Problem: Disk Shows as Unknown
Among the computer compositions, hard disk drive (HDD) is the most significant one. During the continuous use of a computer, a plenty of problems, such as inaccessible partition, mysterious data loss and disk shows as unknown or uninitialized/unallocated/RAW error may appear, beyond all expectations.
It is really annoying to find disk unknown, not initialized, unallocated. People will be worrying about how to fix a bad hard disk as well as how to recover data from uninitialized disk.
Here, I recommend using MiniTool Power Data Recovery for unknown disk recovery and then I will offer some pragmatic tips for fixing disk unknown not initialized error by taking Windows 10 as an example.
5 Specific Cases of HDD Shows as Unknown
Admittedly, all kinds of disk errors may easily appear during the using process of the computer. If you searched this on Google, you’ll be even surprised by some hard disk recovery situations.
Currently, I find a large number of users saying that their HDD shows as unknown and the details of their issues are quite different. They’re struggling to find a powerful way to recover files from disk shows as unknown completely.
Thus, I roughly divide the HDD unknown, not initialized or unallocated error into 4 different types of cases for users’ reference. And the last case is HDD becomes bad physically.
Please read this article carefully when diskpart encounters an error suddenly:
On discovering your disk shows as unknown, uninitialized or unallocated, you must take actions at once to recover all valuable data from it.
Case 1 – HDD Shows as Unallocated
When your hard disk drive suddenly becomes unallocated, you’re not able to see it in Windows Explorer. But if you go to the Windows Disk Management under such circumstances, you’ll find it is displayed here.
The disk type is Basic, but all the space on that disk has been turned into unallocated now. This is similar to an initialized disk which is brand new and includes no formatted partition. Indeed, an unallocated disk indicates that all of your previous partitions are lost.
Of course, you’re allowed to create a partition (simple, spanned, striped, mirrored volume) on this disk and make it appear in Windows Explorer, but all of those actions could bring secondary damage to the original data.
So, when the entire disk is turned into unallocated all out of a sudden, the first thing you should do is always performing HDD recovery.
Case 2 – HDD Shows as Not Initialized
When you find your external HDD is not showing up on the current computer, what are you expected to do? Actually, you may open the built-in Windows Disk Management tool and see whether it appears or not.
You may see it appeared here and shown as “Not Initialized”. Likewise, all the space of this disk is marked as unallocated. This is exactly the same to the disk which is bought lately and you have no time to initialize it yet. If you right-click on this disk, a pop-up menu will appear and the first option on it is “Initialize Disk”.
However, when your disk is not initialized anymore due to sudden change, I don’t suggest you to initialize the disk to make it usable again. And I believe most of you will care more about how to initialize disk without losing data.
So, my suggestion is, getting back data from the uninitialized disk at first. Then, initialize the disk with Windows built-in tool or third-party tools.
You often have two choices when initializing a disk.
- Initialize to MBR disk.
- Initialize to GPT disk.
Case 3 – HDD Shows as RAW
Sometimes, you may see your HDD in the Windows Explorer; but when you click to open it, you’ll find the access is denied.
As a senior user who has used computer for a long time, this situation may be not strange to you. And you will find the disk shows as RAW when you check it in the Disk Management afterward.
As you can see, there is no file system on disk 1. This kind of situation will happen when your file system of the HDD is corrupted due to certain reasons. But please remember, you should not agree to format this disk as required unless all data saved there are of no use.
Case 4 – HDD Is Offline
When an HDD is set offline, it won't show up in “Computer”, which is often called as “Windows Explorer”. This phenomenon seems to be exactly the same with the situation where all your partitions on HDD are lost, but they are really not the same.
This is basically caused by pressing “Offline” by mistake. Or when you’re under the attack of malicious programs, it may set your HDD to be offline.
Case 5 – HDD Is Bad
Sometimes, your hard drive may become a bad disk suddenly. If you run into a power outage while the disk is still running or have been attacked by virus, it's easy that your disk won’t show up in Windows Explorer even if you restart computer successfully.
Recover from the Unknown HDD & Fix Problem
How to Recover Data from Unallocated Disk & Fix
Step 1: get MiniTool Power Data Recovery Trial Edition to experience the software first or purchase a license directly to get a full edition.
Step 2: install the software to any of your disks (except the one which is shown as unknown and has lost data waiting to be recovered). Run the software at the end of installation.
Step 3: launch this data recovery software to enter its main window as shown below. Next, please click on “Hard Disk Drive” from the left pane.
Actually, you can see the “Unallocated Space” area easily after clicking on both “Hard Disk Drive” and “This PC”.
Tip: If your target device is an external HDD and you forget to connect it in advance, you should connect it now and shift to another option in the left pane to refresh. When the external HDD appears in the list, you can finally recover files from it.
Step 4: scan the unallocated space to detect the lost files. You have 2 choices in this step.
- Select the “Unallocated Space” and press “Scan” button.
- Double click on the “Unallocated Space”.
Please note that the scan of the entire disk may last for a relatively long time, so please wait with patience.
Tip: If you only need certain types of files, you should click on the “Settings” button (next to the “Scan”). Then, check the file systems & file types you desire and press “OK” to confirm.
Step 5: during the scan, the data recovery software will find many possible partitions for you. These partitions will be listed in order and each one of them contains plentiful files. You should click to browse the partitions and files in order to decide which to recover and which not.
If too many partitions are found, only some of them will be listed automatically; to see more found partitions, you should click on “Show More Partitions” as suggested.
Tip: Of course, if you can remember the file name exactly, you may use the “Find” function to navigate to certain files quickly. Or you can enable the “Filter” function to locate certain files in a flash.
Step 6: please tick all the files you want to recover and press “Save” button to choose a proper storage location for them. At last, press “OK” button to confirm your selection.
When all the files are recovered to the appointed place, a prompt window will appear, indicating that the unknown disk recovery is finished and you can close the software currently.
Note: If you’re using a trial edition, you are not allowed to recover any data. The trial edition is only designed for scanning and preview. If you would like to upgrade your copy of MiniTool Power Data Recovery to an advanced edition, you need to acquire a license right now.
In fact, in addition to Trial Edition, MiniTool Power Data Recovery also provides 8 types of license (4 for home users and 4 for business users) to meet different needs. The main functions of those editions are the same, but the usage limits of different licenses are different. You can find detailed information on our license comparison webpage.
Disk 1 Unknown Not Initialized External Hard Drive Windows 10
After that, you may create new partitions on the disk again and then transfer data back to it.
Fix an Uninitialized Disk
When your disk becomes not initialized suddenly, you should start to recover data from this disk firstly (the steps to regain your precious data in this case are the same with what were mentioned in the previous unallocated disk case).
And then, you should initialize the disk with Disk Management or other reliable disk management tools.
Fix a RAW Disk
Also, the data recovery steps are basically the same as what I mentioned in “How to Recover Data from Unallocated Disk & Fix”.
Differences are:
- In order to recover data from a RAW disk, you may click on “This PC” or “Hard Disk Drive” in step 3.
- In step 4, you should select the RAW disk from right pane and scan it.
After recovery, you may as well re-format the RAW disk to make it available for data storage.
Set Disk Online
The recovery steps are the same as what I mentioned in “How to Recover Data from Unallocated Disk & Fix” part.
At this time, you have two choices to activate the offline disk.
- You could try opening DM. And then, right click on the target disk and choose “Online” to fix.
- You can also open the free edition of MiniTool Partition Wizard. Then, let it set your disk online automatically.
All in all, you’ve got great chance to recover data from unknown disk as long as your HDD is not damaged physically.
Recover from a Bad Disk
When your HDD becomes bad, I advise you to open Disk Management (DM) to find out whether this disk can be detected or not.
If this disk is shown as unallocated or is marked as not initialized, you can open MiniTool Partition Wizard free edition to get hands on more details.
In above picture, you can see that the disk, which shows “Not initialized” in DM, is shown as “Read Only” in MiniTool Partition Wizard. It means that this disk may be write-protected somehow. This is also known as a type of bad disk.
In this case, you should also try to recover data from the broken disk; but you may end up in failure. After that, you should try to fix the disk by removing the write protection manually.
Till now, you must know well about how to recover data from hard drive that shows as unknown and how to fix the problem in different cases.
Verdict
I’m pretty sure that when users find their HDD shows as unknown or become not accessible, most of them will think of hard disk data recovery and how to fix the problem to make it finally appear.
Of course, the first thing they should do is trying every means possible to recover data from unknown disk (you should determine which case your HDD problem belongs to).
The good news is that I can really make it a breeze; you should follow the steps mentioned above carefully to recover data from disk.
After that, you are expected to fix the unknown disk to make it usable again by doing the following things.
- Creating new partitions
- Re-initializing disk
- Formatting the RAW drive
- Setting disk online
- Removing write protection
I am using laptop with windows 8. I have connected my HDD via USB cable. There are two lights on cable 'Access' and 'Power' access is glowing bright red and power dim red. When I connect HDD system detects it but when I go to disk management to activate it it shows following (Disk 2).
I have also tried connecting it to Windows 7 PC, again it would detect that something is connected but disk wouldn't appear under drives.
HDD is WD2000 (Western Digital 200GB), and I know t works (worked a year ago when I have pulled it out to use as archive, hasn't been dropped, was sitting cosy on a shelf). Another thing worth mentioning that drive is
MBR
, while both systems I have used to connect to use UEFI
and GPD
. I have read that it could be that USB port is lacking power and this is the reason why drive does not work? Or this is something else?
Matas VaitkeviciusMatas Vaitkevicius70122 gold badges1414 silver badges3232 bronze badges
1 Answer
For those who are wondering it was indeed 'lack of power' issue. Initially I was using this cable and it would detect that something was connected but could not reach the files, so I got a powered one and bingo.
Matas VaitkeviciusMatas Vaitkevicius70122 gold badges1414 silver badges3232 bronze badges
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Summary :
“The request failed due to a fatal device hardware error” or “not accessible fatal device hardware error” arises frequently, leading to serious problems like data loss and unavailable drive. Here, in this section, I’ll show you the error and give you the best solution to it.
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Section 1: The Request Failed Due To a Fatal Device Hardware Error
Have you ever met “the request failed due to a fatal device hardware error”? Do you know what does this mean exactly? And do you want to recover data from the device on which such error appears? I guess the answers to those questions are “yes”, “no” and “yes”.
The not accessible fatal device hardware error (once this error occurs on a drive, that drive will become not accessible) shows up now and then on different devices (WD external hard drive and Seagate hard drive are two most common devices).
Hard Disk Fatal Error Appears on WD Drive & Seagate Drive
Now, let’s take a look at the following true cases.
1. WD fatal error device discovery:
Hi my name is Brianne and I've run into some issues with my WD my passport external hard drive and I'm unsure if purchasing your program will help. First off, I am computer illiterate! When I plug in my external drive, it shows up in my devices but I'm unable to view anything. After googling my issue I found that going to disk management and changing the letter would fix the problem however, my external drive shows up as 'disk 1, unknown, not initialized'. After more googling I found that I need to initialize my hard drive by rebuilding MBR. Again, I have no idea what any of this means but I follow the instructions and I get an error message 'The request failed due to a fatal device hardware error'. Your program was suggested but I'm not sure what needs to be done to fix my issue and if your program does whatever I need. Can you please help me?- from Ball, Brianne, a potential customer of MiniTool
2. Seagate fatal error device discovery:
I just bought a new hard drive because my last one ended up not working. It's a 2 Terabyte Hard internal hard drive from Seagate. When I put it in my computer to install Windows 10, it said it had 0.0 space left. So I connect it to my laptop (with a sata cord I bought) to see what's the issue and I can't do anything to it. Can't format it (I think it needs to be initialized first cause currently, disk management has it labeled as unknown), can't initialize it (Says request failed due to fatal device hardware error) can't delete anything either. I'm so perplexed because this is a new hard drive, why is this happening?- from Mr.Ashy, a visitor on Tech Support Guy Forums
Disk 1 Unknown Not Initialized External Hard Drive Enclosure
The Best Fatal Device Hardware Error Solution
In reality, few people know the reason why their drives become unavailable suddenly and give such a fatal error message. But what they’re more concerned about is how they can recover data from inaccessible drive or how to fix the fatal device hardware error.
Considering that data is more important than the drive itself to most people and that there are often many valuable data on it when the hard drive is not accessible, I’ve made the decision to teach you how to recover data from the not accessible flash drive/hard drive. During this process, MiniTool Power Data Recovery could be a good assistant.
Advanced features of Power Data Recovery:
- It is really powerful (be able to recover data from both inaccessible partition and unallocated/initialized disk).
- It has high compatibility (gives support to USB flash drive, SD card, hard drive, and other common storage devices).
- What’s more, it is provided with wizard-style interfaces so that even inexperienced computer users can handle it effortlessly.
- Most important of all, you can get enough guarantees since you get one copy.
Section 2: Recover Files from Not Accessible Drive
Encountering the fatal device hardware error on SD card or any other devices is not the end of the world; on the contrary, you still have a chance to recover your important data from that problematic drive and then fix the error if possible.
No matter you want to fix fatal hardware error on a hard drive or on SD card, the first thing to do should always be data recovery from the not accessible drive. When all your needed files have been recovered successfully from the drive on which such an error occurs, you can try all sorts of possible ways to fix fatal device hardware error.
As for the data recovery, of course, you can get a trial edition to experience the performance of MiniTool Power Data Recovery at first by installing & launching it on your computer.
- If you are satisfied with this software, you may click here to buy a license for a full edition.
- If you are not content with it, just uninstall it from your computer and you won’t lose anything.
How to Recover Data from Inaccessible Hard Disk
Since the Trial Edition is not able to recover any data for you, I’ll just take the Personal Edition as an example to show you how to recover data from not accessible drive in the following content.
Step 1: choose the most suitable option from the left panel.
If you can see the hard disk and its partitions in Windows Explorer, but receive an access is denied error when trying to access it, you should run select “This PC”.
You need to connect your device to the computer first when it is not an internal hard drive, in order to see whether it appears in Windows Explorer or not.
- If the flash drive shows up, but you fail to access it, you should run MiniTool Power Data Recovery and select “Removable Disk Drive”. (You may also select “Hard Disk Drive” if the removable drive is a hard drive)
- If it doesn’t appear, you should read Fix USB Flash Drive Not Recognized & Recover Data – How To Do to try to figure out the problem and then fix it.
You must know that you are able to recover data from inaccessible flash drive only when it can be recognized by Windows Disk Management. If the disk doesn’t show up in Windows Explorer but does appear in Disk Management, marked with the label of “Unallocated”, “Not Initialized” or “Unknown”, you may resort to the following passage to solve disk unknown problem: Sony handycam ccd-tr82 stereo 8mm video 8 camcorder battery charger.
On discovering your disk shows as unknown, uninitialized or unallocated, you must take actions at once to recover all valuable data from it.
You can also read My Drive does not appear in Windows Explorer view to find proper resolutions provided by Microsoft.
Step 2: select the correct disk or partition to scan from the right panel.
You need to select the exact partition/hard disk that becomes not accessible and gives you the not accessible fatal device hardware error when you tried to open it. Then, click on the “Scan” button at the bottom of the software interface to start detecting files.
Note: The “Settings” button next to the “Scan” button is able to help you select certain file types. You can click on it and choose the file types you need and then click on the “OK” button to confirm. Then, the software will only show you those kinds of files in the scan result.
Note: If you forget to connect the USB flash drive or external disk to computer, you should connect it now and shift to another option and then shift back to the original one in the left panel in order to refresh the list. This helps to show your removable devices.
Step 3: check all the needed files & folders to recover.
No matter what option you choose and which partition/disk you scan, you’ll be provided with more than one partition sometimes during the scan and when the scan is finished. At this time, you’ve got a lot of work to do:
- You have to open all the found partitions and folders inside one by one to browse the files.
- You should pick out which files are needed and which ones are not.
If you have ever stored large amounts of data on the disk, this process would be long and boring, but you need to be careful all the time.
Please note that the “Preview”, “Find” and “Filter” functions are able to help you locate a file more easily.
- “Preview” helps you to view the content of a picture/photo/text file before you check it.
- “Find” function is able to search for an exact file by typing filename.
- “Filter” function (also called Advanced Filter) is useful when you prefer to search for files by file extension, file size or file creation/modification date.
Step 4: set a safe storage directory for the files waiting to be recovered.
After adding a check mark in the square box in front of all the files you plan to recover, you should click on the “Save” button in the lower right corner to see the “Select a directory to save files:” window. Obviously, you need to select a storage path for the files you’ve checked.
And you must pay attention to the following two things:
- Please do not choose the original flash drive/hard drive with the fatal device hardware error as the destination of the file recovery.
- Please make sure that the target storage drive has enough free space to store all the files you’ve selected to recover.
After making your decision, you ought to click on “OK” button below to confirm.
You’ll need to wait for a short time before all the files are saved to the destination drive. And when you see a pop-up window informing you that the files have been recovered, you can go to check them.
Note: If that’s all you need, you may close MiniTool Power Data Recovery now. If you’re worrying that there may be files that you need but forget to recover, you may click on the “Export Scan Result” (next to “Preview”) to save the current scan result to your drive, and then make use of the “Load Manually” function in the main interface of software to import the result whenever you want.
Section 3: Fix Fatal Device Hardware Error
After people have recovered all useful data from the not accessible drive or for people who don’t care about the data in that drive at all, how to fix the not accessible fatal device hardware error comes first in their to-do list. Here, I will talk about some of the commonly used repair methods.
Reformat the Drive
- Open Windows Disk Management.
- Find the inaccessible flash drive/hard drive.
- Right click on it and choose “Format…”.
- Set a proper volume label, file system and allocation unit size (you can also keep the default information provided by the system).
- Click on the “OK” button to confirm in the same interface
- Click on the “OK” button in another pop-up window to start formatting.
- Wait for the completion.
Tip: You can also make use of the “Format Partition” or “Wipe Partition” function of MiniTool Partition Wizard if above method ends up in failure.
Initialize the Disk
- Open the Windows Disk Management.
- Right-click on the “Unknown” & “Not Initialized” disk if the “Initialize Disk” Window doesn’t pop up automatically.
- Choose a partition style (MBR or GPT) for the selected disk.
- Click on the “OK” button to confirm your selection.
Tip: You can also make use of the “Initialize to MBR Disk”, “Initialize to GPT Disk” or “Wipe Disk” function of MiniTool Partition Wizard if above method fails you.
In addition to above two methods, you can also try to change USB port or computer, check & shield bad sectors or replace the bad component (such as the magnetic head) to fix the fatal device hardware error.
Section 4: Draw a Conclusion
Though the request failed due to a fatal device hardware error is inevitable sometimes, I have the right way to deal with it. Dil mchori sada ho gaya karoke. That is:
- Recover data from the not accessible drive.
- Make sure you have got back all the data you need.
- Try any possible ways to fix the error and make the drive work normally again.
So you shouldn’t get into panic immediately when encountering this hard disk fatal error. What you really need to do is staying calm & following the steps I have mentioned above to rescue your data and device as much as possible.