WD My Book Unallocated

The problem is as follows:

External Disk Drive was unplugged and plugged back in accidentally. Was working fine until I restarted my Computer. Disk Drive is no longer viewable and appears as Unallocated in the Disk Manager. Drive was not damaged and seems to power on fine without any harsh noises. Cannot seem to utilize disk recovery or initialize (and wipe the drive) as access is denied because of the security settings on said drive.

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What is the best way to recover the data on the drive at this point? The 3rd party software I have tried using does not have access either. Is there any way to force a password through the unrecognized drive to get write access back and to deal with the data recovery?

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Can I even do a ChkDsk at this point?

Fortunately I have solved the issue; And as such I advise away from using password protected software if you can help it.

https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/13880/h/p2#subject2

I believe Java updates messed with the latest version of WD Discovery. Installed WD security from the website and it was able to detect the drive and allow me to login without issue.

I have now removed the password from the drive as a precaution with the understanding that even if a small part of the drive is corrupted the whole drive is bricked because of said security functions.

Whenever there is “disk unknown not initialized” issue occurs, your hard drive may show unallocated space in Disk Management, and the data 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 the not initialized error on an external hard drive

  1. Connect the 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 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:

  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.

However, to recover data from the affected drive you may need the help of reliable data recovery software. Here, I suggest you to check out Stellar Data Recovery Professional Software to recover your data from the affected drive.

Hope it helps!