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I had the internal hard drive in my HPTouchSmart 600 (Windsows 7 64bit) replaced. When I got it home, I plugged in my WD 2 TB external hard drive. It worked fine. Within the next 24 hrs something happened. The drive no longer shows up in 'Computer'.

The Drive shows up in the Device Manager as:

  • WD My Book 1140 USB Device

In Device Properties on the Volumes Tab:

  • Disk: Disk1
  • Type: Unknown
  • Status: Not Initialized
  • Partition Style: Not Applicable
  • Capacity: 1907697 MB
  • Unallocated Space: 0 MB
  • Reserved Space: 0 MB

When I open the Disk Manager, I receive the following Pop-Up:

You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it.

Select Disks:

[] Disk 1

Use the following partition style for the selected disks:

   () MBR(Master Boot Record)

   () GPT (GUID Partition Table)

Note: The GPT partition style is not recognized by all previous versions of Windows....

[OK] [Cancel]

This disk contains several hundred movies which would take significant amount of time to re-burn. I tried the External drive on my laptop and it no longer shows up there either. Is my data gone?

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5 Answers 5

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Initializing a disk will indeed delete the data, so I would first recommend you not do that.

In order to recover the data, you would have to use a third party tool in order to recover it. It's possible that the master partition table on the drive was deleted somehow.

There are many tools out there that can recover data, personally I've used EaseUS Partition Manager and Wondershare Data Recovery, which have done the job for me in the past, though there is no guarantee.

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  • Also recuva is good instrument to recover files
    – Romeo Ninov
    May 6, 2015 at 6:54
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I've used EaseUS Partition Manager and that tool helps me to find my lost partition of Disk, but I recommend you to work with http://www.partitionguru.com/ (Partition Guru ) It's more sophisticated and give you a lot of possibilities to manipulate you HD and your data. The website give you also some tutorial on how to fix your problem check Them. See also my comment on My External USB Hard Drive won't show up It may helps you! Be careful and try to restore your whole data .

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Initializing the drive may solve the issue, but you will lose your data. In order to gain some access to the drive, I would try it on another PC. If the issue persists, try with the chkdsk /r, /f commands. Some users have success accessing their drives with a Linux Live CD, so give it a try.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd637756.aspx – more details about chkdsk commands.

Hope this helps

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Go ahead and download the partition wizard. Start the software, find you're device on the bottom. If on the beginning of you're USB device you find :*, then that means you must simply assign a drive letter in order to see you're USB drive. Right click on you're device, find the "change letter" option and simply give it a letter. Apply changes at the top and see if you're drive now pops up.

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  • The same (assign letter) can be done via OS instruments, there is no need ot external software
    – Romeo Ninov
    May 6, 2015 at 6:51
  • I do know that, but I am simply suggesting this fix the way I have always worked.
    – Bryan
    May 6, 2015 at 21:24
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If your hard disk is new and you have any data to loose then go to computer management and in the bottom you will find unknown disk with space. Click on it and menu will be popup with 2 option MBR and GTP-

Click on second option GPT and OK this will make your external drive online but allocated. After that you can create partition from that.

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  • Welcome to Super User! Please read the question again carefully. Your answer does not answer the original question. His hard disk is not new. It has data on it he doesn't want to lose.
    – DavidPostill ♦
    Oct 3, 2015 at 22:07

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