External Hard Drive Unknown Not Initialised

Hi, I have been pulling my hair trying to fix the Unknown not initialized issue on a external hard drive, please if anyone can help that would be great

I have a UnionSine External Hard Drive 500GB which is not showing on my PC when i connect it up, i have tried 5 different laptops and still same issue

However, i am getting the below device showing on device manager when i try connect it.

It is showing "unknown not initialised" on Device management.

I tried to partition it on 2 different softwares, i am getting the below error on AOMEI partition assistant, its not even showing device storage.

I tried to use multiple data recovery softwares, and none of them are able to detect my external hard drive.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks

Hi, please explain did this just happen, what OS is this, did you just install a update or update to a new OS version or update from Win7 ???

The drive info has become corrupted thus it is being reported as not initialized.

You would need to rescue anything on the drive of importance : https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/bootable-windows-pe-based-recovery-discs/

and would think format it.

Can try through this though : https://www.easeus.com/resource/disk-unknown-not-initialized.html

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/external-drive-not-recognized-this-is-how-to-fix-it-in-windows/

Your images seem to point to the possibility that the USB interface controller in the external enclosure has become unprogrammed, and is no longer passing on the details of the drive.

You might need to open the drive enclosure, and connect the drive within to another USB to SATA (or whatever the drive is) interface.

If new, or under warranty this is not an option of course.

If old, with valuable data on it - worth a try.

If it's new, then RMA it.  If you can RMA it, and it's an SSD inside, you might want to consider making sure it's not fraudulently labeled

with a utility like Validrive (Windows) or F3 Fight Flash Fraud (Unix systems like MacOS -install with Brew or similar - or Linux - use your distro's repository).  It's also been known that sometimes even name brand SSD firmware can be buggy and result in a dead/bricked drive once it reaches half full, so this kind of utility might detect that kind of bug.

If it's out of warranty then you can at least try Testdisk.  However, it's likely this is dead hardware, in which case most software solutions won't work, or at least not such that the drive can be reliably used in the future.

Taking the drive out of the case probably isn't going to work as most external USB connected drives these days are hardwired directly to the USB connector.  That is, there isn't a separate host bus to SATA or NVMe converter like you'll find in some older external hard drives it's built into the drive's control board (in some cases with old IDE hard drives you may find the internal drive is an IDE drive connected to a separate power and data bus where the controller sits:  computer > USB host controller > USB cable > USB to IDE translator/adapter > IDE cable > IDE hard drive with a separate 12/5 DC power connector because USB v2 can't provide enough power to spin up a 12 volt spindle motor.  This generally hasn't been the case for 2.5" laptop style USB drives for years now, however).

Edited by h_b_s, 20 January 2024 - 10:22 PM.

A drive that suddenly becomes "Not Initialized" usually indicates a drive failure. As GeopffK posted, it could be the USB bridge card. Unfortunately, if your drive is like the one in the below link the USB bridge card is most likely integrated with the drive's circuit board. The USB port would be soldered to the board which would prevent you from attaching the bare drive via a USB adapter.

https://www.amazon.com/UnionSine-Portable-External-Storage-Compatible/dp/B091FS79T8

I recognise Jmicron as a chipset for a RAID device.  Could be used for other device too.  I suspect that it failed because it's the only thing you didn't change in your tests.  So, I'm with GeoffK on this.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/793642/external-hard-drive-unknown-not-initialised/?p=5606377

If it's possible to remove the drive from the extender device, your disk might work again if it has a format that Windows recognise.  If not, Linux should recognise it as this chipset often uses Linux software.