[Guide] How to Fix Hard Disk not Initialized Error and Restore Your Data

Don't worry when your hard disk not initialized! This guide offers different solutions to fix the disk not initialized problem on Windows.

Hard Drive Recovery

Format Hard Drive+
  1. How to Clone Hard Drive
  2. How to Format Hard Drive from Bios
  3. Format Hard Drive for Xbox One
  4. How to Format C Drive in Windows 10/7/XP
  5. How to Perform PS4 External Hard Drive Format
  6. How to Format Hard Drive from Bios
  7. Format Hard Drive for Xbox One
  8. How to Format C Drive in Windows 10/7/XP
  9. How to Perform PS4 External Hard Drive Format
  10. How to Format Drive in Linux
  11. How to Format Hard Drive to NTFS
  12. How to Format WD My Passport
  13. How to Format Your Drive to FAT32 System
  14. Format HDD Low Level
  15. Format a BitLocker Encrypted Drive
  16. How to Unformat Hard Disk
  17. How to Format a RAW Drive
  18. Fix Your Hard Drive’s Formatting Issues
  19. How to Format SSD
  20. How to Format your Hard Drive to exFAT File System
  21. How to Format a Hard Drive to FAT32
Hard Drive Recovery+
  1. Top 10 Hard Drive Recovery Tools
  2. How to Recover Lost Data from Maxtor External Hard Drive
  3. How to Recover Data from Hitachi External Hard Drive
  4. How to Recover Data from Dead Hard Drive
  5. How to Recover Data from SimpleTech External Hard Drive
  6. How to Recover A Formatted Hard Drive in 3 Simple Clicks
  7. How to Recover Lost Data from Iomega External Hard Drive
  8. How to Recover Data from Toshiba External Hard Drive
  9. How to Recover Data from Transcend External Hard Drive
  10. Lacie External Hard Drive Data Recovery and Repair
  11. Best Way to Recover Data from a Floppy Disk 
  12. How to Recover Data from HP External Hard Drive
  13. Best Method to Recover Data from Crashed Hard Drive
  14. How to Repair Toshiba Hard Disk
  15. Recover Files from WD My Book External Hard Drive
  16. Ways to Repair Seagate Hard Disk
Fix Hard Drive Error+
  1. How to Fix the Hard Disk 3F0 Error
  2. How To Get Your Hard Drive Live Longer
  3. Perform HDD Bad Sector Repair on Any Hard Drive
  4. Recover Formatted Partition
  5. How to Recover Files from Corrupted Hard Disk
  6. How to Fix Hard Disk not Initialized Error
  7. Fix Fatal Hard Disk Not Detected Error
Hard Drive Tips+
  1. How to Clone a Hard Drive
  2. How to Rescue Data from Hard Drive
  3. How to Fix HDD Write Protected Error
  4. How to Completely Wipe a Hard Drive
Mac Hard Drive Recovery+
  1. Recover Lost Data from Seagate External Hard Drive on Mac
  2. How to Recover Data from Formatted Hard Disk Drive on Mac
  3. How to Recover Data from Seagate Backup
  4. How to Recover Lost Data from Western Digital External Hard Drive
  5. Top 5 Tools for Mac Disk Recovery on Mac
  6. How to Format Toshiba Hard Drive for Mac
  7. Format a Hard Drive for Mac: Ultimate Guide 2021

• Filed to: Hard Drive Recovery • Proven solutions

My external hard drive not initialized! How to fix the disk not initialized error?

- a question from Quora

If a similar query has brought you here, then this would probably be the last guide that you would read on the disk not initialized error. This is quite a common issue that Windows users face, which stops them from using their hard drive the usual way.

While the situation is more common with external hard drives, even the internal disk of your system can encounter this problem. Don’t worry – we will teach you how to perform hard disk not initialized fix in this in-depth guide.

hard disk not initialized fix

Part 1: What Does Hard Disk Unknown Not Initialized Mean?

The hard disk not initialized is a common Windows error that does not allow us to access the disk space. It can happen when the disk space becomes unavailable or can’t be detected by Windows. Ideally, there are two different kinds of situations for the disk unknown not initialized error.

Situation 1: Disk is unknown, not initialized, unallocated

When you visit the Disk Management application, you can see two instances of disk unknown not initialized. The first situation happens when the operating system is not able to initialize the disk due to unallocated space. It occurs when the disk has a corrupt storage or a missing sector. The file system of the disk can also be not supported by the application. Thus, it is just marked as an “unallocated” space.

hard-disk-not-initialized-fix-2

Situation 2: Disk is unknown, not initialized, no disk space

Sometimes, users also get the “no disk space” prompt with the disk unknown not initialized issue. Ideally, it happens when the disk has no space that can be accessed by Windows. There could be a cartridge problem or the drive can be blocked entirely. A malware could have blocked the entire disk space, making it unavailable.

Part 2: What Causes Hard Disk Not Initialized Issue

In order to do the hard disk not initialized fix, you need to first diagnose the problem. Following are some of the major reasons for causing the issue on your drive that should be avoided in the future:

Part 3: How Can I Recover Data from a Non Initialized Hard Drive

When the hard disk becomes unavailable, users can no longer access its stored content. Though, with the help of a recovery tool like Recoverit, you can easily extract content from a non initialized hard drive.

It is a highly professional data recovery tool that works efficiently under different scenarios. Using it, you can extract your photos, videos, documents, etc. from the hard drive that your system can’t initialize or access anymore.

Recoverit

A Life Saver to Solve Your Data Loss Problems!

  • With the help of Recoverit, users can easily get back their lost, deleted, and inaccessible content from their hard drive.
  • The application supports data recovery under different scenarios from Windows internal drive or any other external hard drive as well.
  • It is compatible with all kinds of file systems like NTFS, FAT, exFAT, and so on.
  • Recover photos, videos, music, documents, compressed files, and almost every other kind of data.
  • Preview your data first before restoring it to the location of your choice.
icon_security 3,165,867 people have downloaded it

You can simply follow these easy steps to extract data from a hard disk that can’t be initialized or is not available.

Step 1 Select a target location to scan

Firstly, just launch the Recoverit application on your Windows and select a target location from its home. You can choose the entire drive from here or even an external hard disk that is connected to your computer.

launch recoverit

Step 2 Perform Scanning Process

Once you click on the “Start” button, Recoverit would look for all kinds of lost or inaccessible content from your hard drive. You can just wait for a few minutes and let the application complete the process.

scan data

Step 3 Recover your files

When the data recovery process is completed, you can view the extracted content on the native interface of the application. Now, just preview your data and choose the files (or folders) you wish to save. As you would click on the “Recover” button, a browser window will open so that you save your files to any location.

preview and recover data

It is recommended to recover your files to any other partition or drive and not on the same location from where it was lost before.

Part 4: How to Fix Disk Unknown Not Initialized Issue in Windows 10

Apart from using Recoverit to access your unavailable content, you can also take some steps to fix the disk not initialized error. Here are the commonly recommended solutions you can try for hard disk not initialized fix as well.

Situation 1: Disk is unknown, not initialized, unallocated

If the Disk Management application shows that a partition is unallocated, then you can consider the following suggestions:

Fix 1: Initialize the Disk

If you have recently formatted the disk, then you might get the error as the partition has not been initialized. For an easy disk unknown not initialized fix, just launch the Disk Management application from Windows Settings or Control Panel. Now, select the unallocated space here, right-click, and choose to initialize the disk.

hard disk not initialized fix

A pop-up wizard would launch for you to initialize the disk. Select a partition style like MBR or GPT and follow a click-through process to initialize the connected disk.

Fix 2: Rebuild MBR

MBR, which stands for Master Boot Record, has crucial data about all the partitions and meta component of the drive. If you are getting the hard disk not initialized problem, then there could be an issue with its MBR.

The good news is that you can easily fix it with the help of Command Prompt. Just go to the Start menu and from here, launch Command Prompt as an administrator.

hard disk not fix

Enter the following commands and wait for a while as it would rebuild MBR on your system:


Situation 2: Disk is unknown, not initialized, no disk space

This is something that occurs in external hard drives when Windows can’t initialize the disk and marks it as “no space”. These 3 suggestions can help you do hard disk not initialized fix of the no disk space problem.

Fix 1: Check the USB connection

If you are using an external hard drive, then make sure it is connected to your system correctly. You can just disconnect it from your system first and clean the USB port from dirt or debris. Try reconnecting it again to check if you still get the same error.

Fix 2: Format the drive

format drive

If the hard drive has an unsupported file system, then you can format it to do the hard disk not initialized fix. For this, just go to the Disk Management application and select the unallocated space. Right-click and choose to create a new simple volume by clicking on the respective option.

This will launch a dedicated wizard from where you can format the hard drive to a compatible format like NTFS or exFAT.

Fix 3: Update Disk Drivers

If your system is running on outdated drivers, then it can also cause the disk not initialized problem. Thankfully, it can easily be fixed by updating the disk drivers. Just go to the Start menu and launch Device Manager from here. You can also launch it from the Run prompt or Windows Settings.

update disk drivers

Simply expand the Disk Drivers option, right-click the relevant disk, and click on “Update Driver”. This will launch a dedicated wizard, letting you update the disk driver and access its unavailable partitions.

Conclusion:

That’s a wrap, everyone. I’m sure that after reading this guide, you would be able to fix disk not initialized problem. If you are worried about the inaccessibility of your data, then simply take the assistance of Recoverit.

Besides that, you can also implement the above-listed solutions to do hard disk not initialized fix. These solutions would work with almost all the major versions of Windows like 10, 8, 7, or XP. Go ahead and give it a try and feel free to share any other solution for the problem that we could have missed in this guide.

Elva

staff Editor

Hot Articles

Format Hard Drive from Command Prompt in Windows 10
Here to learn how to format hard drive, the method to format pc using cmd, and the way to recover data from a formatted hard disk.
How to Format Hard Drive to FAT32 on Windows 10?
How to format hard drive to FAT32 on Windows 10? Here we offer proven ways to teach you how to format HHD to FAT32 and recover data after formatting.
3 Major Seagate Hard Disk Problems – Ways to Repair Seagate Hard Disk
How to Fix Seagate Hard Drive? Go through this article and find various Seagate Hard Disk repair methods to fix your Seagate Hard Drive.
Format Hard Drive from Bios: A Quick Step-by-Step Guide
Are you wondering how to format hard drive from bios? Read this article to find out when to do it, how to do it, and which are the potential risks.
How To Wipe or Erase a Hard Drive in Windows 7
If you want to give away your computer, first learn how to wipe a hard drive from Windows 7.
Hard Drive Eraser: How to Completely Wipe a Hard Drive?
Do you want to wipe the disk completely? Looking for the right hard drive eraser software programs to clean the whole storage device? You can’t miss this read.
How to Wipe or Erase a Hard Drive in Windows 10?
Ever wonder how you can completely wipe your hard drive in Windows 10? Learn the steps through this comprehensive guide.
How to Format Hard Drive for PS4 without Data Loss?
Want to know how to format hard drive for PS4? This guide will help you format ps4 hard drive and recover data from the formatted hard drive.
Home > > Resource > Hard Drive Recovery > [Guide] How to Fix Hard Disk not Initialized Error and Restore Your Data