Easy Steps to Recover Data from Drive Not Initialized

Why Disk Shows Not Initialized?

When you add a brand new disk to your PC, it can not be used immediately. You need to initialize it before you can work with it. Initializing the disk is a process of preparing it for Windows to use, after which you can format the disk and begin to store data on it.

But sometimes, you will find the "Disk (0, 1, 2...), unknown, not initialized (unallocated space or no disk space)" error happens to you, which stops you from accessing any data on the disk. Then, you may seek some ways available to recover data from drive not initialized.

Before proceeding, let's briefly explain the reasons and solutions behind two cases of the disk not initialized error.

◉ The disk is brand new and shows not initialized. This is because a new disk needs to be initialized before it can show up in File Explorer. Just locate the target drive in Disk Management and select "Initialize Disk" and follow the onscreen instructions to initialize it to MBR or GPT.
◉ The disk has been used for some time and becomes "Not Initialized" suddenly. This may be caused by MBR corruption, bad sectors, lost partitions, and many other factors. Accordingly, you can rebuild MBR, check disk errors, recover missing partitions, etc to fix the issue.

As you can see, if your hard drive is brand new, you could directly initialize it and don't need to worry about any data loss. However, if you have been using it for a long time and stored many data on it, chances are that when you initialize the already-used disk, you will suffer data loss.

Besides, other given solutions to hard disk not initialized error does not completely guarantee your data security. But don’t worry, the content below that focuses on how to recover data from not initialized hard drive will clear your concerns.

How to recover data from a not initialized hard drive?

From what we described above, it's annoying to find "Not Initialized" error on your hard drive, which is always accompanied by data loss. This part will show you how to restore lost data in different situations.

Situation 1. Disk Partition is deleted and cause inside data loss

As we mentioned before, if all the partitions on the target disk get lost or deleted unintentionally, you might also suffer a "disk unknown, not initialized, unallocated space" issue. In such a case, you'll lose all the contents on the missing partition as well.

In order to get the deleted partition back, we'll introduce you an intelligent partition recovery tool called AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional (compatible with Windows 11/10/8/7/XP/Vista) whose promising feature is that it can retrieve the data on the lost partition at the same time. So, you can shoot two hawks with one arrow.

Here comes the detailed steps on how to recover data from drive not initialized by restoring the lost partition.

Step 1. Install and open AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, and click "Recover" > "Partition Recovery" on the main interface. Select the disk from which you want to recover the lost partition and click "Next" in the new small window.

Step 2. Choose a search method (Fast Search or Full Search) and click "Next". Here we select "Fast Search", which will quickly find out deleted and lost partitions.

Step 3. Tick the lost partition to recover and click "Proceed" to continue.

Step 4. Click "Finish" after the recovery process is completed.

Situation 2. Disk Partition is intact but the data is missing

If the drive not initialized error is not led by the lost partition, but by corrupted file system or bad sectors, things become complicated but still addressable. AOMEI FastRecovery is an expert data recovery tool. After fixing the problematic drive, you can utilize this application to recover data from drive not initialized easily.

▶ It can recover more than 200 types of data, including pictures, videos, audio, etc.
▶ In addition to internal hard drives, it also works with external hard drives like USB drives, memory cards, and so on.
▶ It supports the recovery of data from NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, ReFS drives/partitions.
▶ It is able to restore data after intentional or accidental removal, recent or permanent deletion, OS (re)installation, (re)formatting, etc.

Just follow the simple guide to see how to recover data from not initialized hard drive:

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI FastRecovery. Choose the exact partition or disk where your data lost and click Scan.

Step 2. Then, the recovery tool start to scan and search. lt will execute the “Quickly Scan" first for finding your deleted data fast, and then execute the “Deep Scan" for searching other lost data.

Step 3. Once the scan is completed, all deleted files, recycle bins and other missing files will be displayed. Please select the file you would like to recover and then click "Recover".

Step 4. Then, select a folder path to save your recovered files.

Step 5. Wait patiently for this process of recovering ends.

Conclusion

It's possible to recover data from drive not initialized and you can learn how to do it from this article. To increase your data recovery chances, we recommend you use the best data recovery software like AOMEI FastRecovery. It has provided two methods to restore your data: one is applicable to data loss caused by partition deletion, and the other is applicable in any case. You can choose one according to your needs.