I have an external hard drive that worked perfectly since 8 years ago. Today with no reasons it stop working. When I plug in the led turns on and the needle starts as normal. after a few seconds “file explorer” popups with the message: “Windows can’t access this disc”. Opening “disk management” the disc appears as “not initialized”, when I try to initialize it, a popup says: “Access denied”.
I used the tool “Data Lifeguard Diagnostic” from WD to scan the disc but after starting a quick or long scan immediately a new popup says: “Too many bad sectors detected” and there are no more options to solve it, I tried to use “Easeus tools”, “Seagate tools” but I think these programs are useless.
I can’t use the “chkdsk” on cmd due to the disc is not assigned a letter, it was encrypted with the WD tool, so I tried to change the letter of the “setup” that functions as the executable to unlock the drive but again, no results.
I’m using W10 Home x64, I tried to read it with an Ubuntu USB Live and a machine with W7 Ultimate but again, any solution, I changed the cable, I tried USB 2.0 ports directly, with hubs, etc.
I rode many forums but nobody has a solution for that problem, maybe somebody here can help me? Thanks in advance.
If it was encrypted with WD tool, then you can use WD security to unlock it. But you will need to provide the password that you used to lock the drive. Good Luck
Dear @jebusx thanks for your reply, WD Security recognizes the drive, I tried to unlock the drive but it shows the message: “Invalid password” although the password is correct, I always used this password and I never changed it. Another suggestion?
Sorry, if you don’t remember to the password then you can’t access the data on the drive. If you still want to continue using the drive and lose all you old data then you can continue enter the wrong password 5 time and it will ask you to format the drive.
You can find in the forum where someone able to use Linux or something to recover the drive data. Wish of luck
Whenever there is a “ disk unknown not initialized” issue occurs, your hard drive may show unallocated space in Disk Management, and the data on which will be inaccessible or else there is another situation: there is no disk space shown in Disk Management.
Below are the 2 different methods to resolve the issue:
Method 1. Use Disk Management to fix not initialized error on an external hard drive
Connect the uninitialized external hard drive to your PC.
Press Win + R keys, type: diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
Find the uninitialized, unknown external hard drive with I/O device error > Right-click on it and select Initialize Disk.
Then set the disk to initialize and set the disk as MBR or GPT.
After this, you may reboot your PC and keep all changes. Now, your external hard drive will be recognized and read by Windows again.
Method 2. Run CMD to repair I/O device error on not initialized external hard drive
This CMD command would erase all data on the uninitialized hard drive, which you can later restore after repairing the external hard drive not initialized, with the help of any data recovery or partition recovery software:
Press Win+R > Type: diskpart and hit Enter.
Type: list disk and hit Enter.
Type: select disk F and hit Enter; (replace F with the drive letter of an uninitialized external hard drive) .
Dear @mikes2, thanks for your reply but as I said in the description, when I try to initialize the disc from Disk Management a popup appears with the message: “Access is denied” for both MBR or GPT, also I can´t use the command prompt because of the disc has no letter assigned due to the WD Security tool was active doing the disc encrypted.
