I droped off my passport 4Tb portable storage

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

My passport 4 Tb portable storage i drop off and its now shown on task bar but not accessible on my file explorer and in disk manager ask me to initialize but its capacity not shown. Please a littel bit help

2

Hi,

It seems that the drive got damaged physically. Could you please answer whether you are hearing any type of noise from the drive or not? If yes then i would suggest you to get your drive checked from storage device professional. And if want to try manual repairing methods then i would suggest you to try Chkdsk command or inbuilt error checking tool to detect and rectify the issue.

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3

thank you for your suggestion, i hear the sound that you tell me about but i can’t get anyone that can help with the problem so i’m thinking to try it by myself. do you think i have a chance to fix it and if i do PLEASE suggest something that can help so that at least i could be able to recover my files.

4

Whenever there is “ 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.

You can give a try to below mentioned 2 different methods to resolve the issue:

Method 1. Use Disk Management to fix not initialized error on external hard drive

  1. Connect uninitialized external hard drive to your PC.
  2. Press Win + R keys, type: diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
  3. Find the uninitialized, unknown external hard drive with I/O device error > Right-click on it and select Initialize Disk.
  4. Then set the disk to initialize and set 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:

  1. Press Win+R > Type: diskpart and hit Enter.
  2. Type: list disk and hit Enter.
  3. Type: select disk F and hit Enter; (replace F with the drive letter of an uninitialized external hard drive).
  4. Type: clean and hit Enter.
  5. Type: convert gpt or convert mbr and hit Enter.
  6. Type: create partition primary and hit Enter.
  7. Type: format quick fs=ntfs and hit Enter.
  8. Type: assign and hit Enter.
  9. Type: exit and hit Enter.

To recover your data from the drive you need help of a reliable data recovery software, here I suggest you to try Stellar Data Recovery software.

Hope it will help you.

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5

Thank you for the helpful suggestion. I tried both of the method you suggested and it kept saying “failed due to fetal device hardware error” is there anything i can do now?

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6

@mikes2 Hello Mike, I have the same issue, my WD passport ultra has data on it I wish to keep. About your method 1; WD tech support staff said Initializing my WD WILL DELETE MY DATA …
Do you know a way to initialize the drive without affecting the data?
thanks in advance

7

Well, if the disk is brand new and there is no data on it then you can initialize using Disk Management. Go to Start with the right mouse button. Select Disk Management. In a new window, click on the new hard drive; if it is “Offline”, then change the status to “Online”. Then right-click on it and select “initialize new disk”. Then you need to click on your preferred GPT or MBR style if this is not done automatically. Then press Enter and wait for the end of the process.

However, if the drive has been used before and contains any important data then first take a backup of your data or create a disk image and then try initializing your disk. To create a disk image you can try using reliable software here, I recommend you to try Stellar Data Recovery Premium software that helps the user to recover their lost or deleted data, repair corrupted photo or video files, and also helps them to create a disk image. To know more about the software you can check the below link:

Hope it will help!