External HDD- a popular compact device that allows you to literally carry large amounts of files in your pocket. Today we will consider the problem of work hard drive when connected external HDD refuses to initialize.
The appearance of a problem when the hard drive is not detected can be influenced by various factors. We will try to cover the most effective ways troubleshooting.
Troubleshooting an external hard drive
Issues related to initializing an external hard drive, may arise as program reasons, and hardware. Unfortunately, if the problem lies precisely in the wear of the hard drive, then nothing can be done here - except to contact the place of purchase if the warranty is still valid. But in any case, it is worth trying to resuscitate the disk yourself using the methods described above.
Method 1: Assigning a drive letter
As an option to fix the error - an attempt to assign a drive letter. First you need to go to the "Disk Management" menu. To do this, open the menu "Control Panel", and then navigate to the section "Administration".
In the list of shortcuts, find and open the item "Computer Management".
In the left part of the window that appears, select the section "Disk Management" and wait for the information to load.
Right-click on the external hard drive and in the additional menu that appears, select "Change Drive Letter or Drive Path".
Click the button "Change".
Expand the list with drive letters, select the appropriate one, save changes, and then confirm the action. Try to initialize the disk and check if it exists in Windows Explorer.
Method 2: Data Recovery and Disk Format
The problem with initialization can often be solved by simply formatting the disk, but if the disk contains files, then you should first restore them to another disk.
For these purposes, you can use free utility R. Saver, which will perform a thorough scan of the disk and find all the data contained on it.
Then the disk can be formatted in NTFS. This can be done both through the "Disk Management" menu (how to get to it was described a little higher), and using special utilities, For example, Acronis Disk Director , with which you can perform the recovery procedure.
Method 3: Checking the disk for bad sectors
The problem can be much more serious, for example, problems with disk initialization could be due to bad sectors. You can check the integrity of sectors using the program Victoria HDD, which will allow you to find bad sectors and hide them if possible.
If the disk is badly damaged, then such a program is unlikely to return it to working capacity. But there is always hope, so do not neglect the use of this program.
And finally
If the drive was purchased less than a year ago, it is still under warranty. In the event that you have not been able to solve the problem on your own, be sure to contact the place of purchase external hard disk. Your device must be accepted under warranty and diagnostics should be performed, according to the results of which the device should be repaired.
Unfortunately, the statistics are modern rigid disks wear out very quickly, and very few devices can work correctly for more than two years.
To figure out why the hard drive is not initializing on your computer, you need to pay attention to the sounds it makes and analyze the information that appears on the screen. Remember also the events that preceded the failure. Were you able to initialize the drive before?
A hard drive (hard drive, HDD), SSD, that is, built-in data storage, is the most unreliable component of a computer or laptop. In case of mechanical breakdowns, it may not turn on at all or make unusual sounds, such as knocking, clicking, crackling, clattering, howling.
They can be translated into human language like this: “I can’t read information.” In combination with persistent failures, during initialization, this means that it is impossible to operate the hard drive. You should contact service center, whose experts will find out whether it is possible to fix this hard drive or at least copy the information on it.
viral infection
Another very common reason for a hard drive not initializing is due to a virus infection. Sometimes viruses declare this themselves, often making demands for any payments. You don't have to give in to blackmail. The easiest way in this case is to boot from another device and cure the infected with an antivirus. To avoid such situations, you should use a high-quality antivirus (both Kaspersky and DrWeb will do), which includes a program like Secure Disk that loads even before launch operating system and checking for viruses both the hard drive and RAM.
Crashes in system data
If the hard drive containing the operating system does not initialize, immediately after executing the Primary Input/Output System (BIOS) program, you may receive a CRC data error message indicating that the information cannot be read correctly. Other messages are also possible. Messages like Boot Disk Failed or Primary Master Disk Fail mean that the zero track of the device is damaged, without which it is impossible to start reading.
Disk Boot Failure indicates that there is a data error in the main boot record systems (MBR or GPT). The phrase Invalid Drive Specification indicates a discrepancy between the device parameters and the information about it that is stored in the BIOS. The reason for this can also be failures in the MBR, or an I/O error due to mechanical damage to the reading heads or contacts in the interface.
To begin with, in these cases, you should check BIOS settings. Here you need to pay attention to which device is assigned for the first bootstrap and whether the hard drive parameters are recognized correctly. In some cases, changing the boot device can help.
System data corruption can be repaired Windows tools or using utilities such as ACRONIS DISK DIRECTORY, however, you can immediately start active actions on a failed device only if there is no data on it. Existing information can be damaged during corrections, therefore, first of all, you should think about how to restore personal data. To do this, as in the case of viruses, you will need to boot from another device and use utilities such as R.saver, R-Studio or Get Data Back. You should restore data to another device so as not to damage files that have not yet been processed. Damage to a significant number of sectors of the hard drive indicates that it will soon fail and we must prepare for its replacement.
The reason that the hard drive is not initialized may be changes in the software made before the failure occurred. For example, changing drivers or installing updates for the operating system, other system products. In this case, it is advisable to restore the system from the last restore point created before the patches were made. To be able to initialize a system restore, access to the device on which the corresponding data is located is required.
When installing the operating system on a formatted high-capacity hard drive (more than 2.2 TB), problems may arise due to the fact that not all Windows versions able to work with GPT master boot record. You can change the recording format to MBR, however, not the entire disk space will be used. If it is not possible to upgrade to a more modern OS, it is better to use a smaller capacity device for the system.
Additional hard drives
What to do if initialization fails hard disks containing alternative operating systems or other information? First, check if any letters are assigned to them. To do this, right-click on the "Computer" line, select "Storage Devices" in the "Management" item and then "Disk Management". If the device you are looking for is visible, but the letter is not assigned to it, the problem is solved very simply. It is enough to select this line, press the right mouse button and change the letter to any free one.
There may be other reasons why disks are not initialized. If they have already been used before, then they may have worked as part of dynamic volume or have been encrypted. In these cases, it is unlikely that you need someone else's information; it is enough to re-format the devices. To prepare for this, you can use a utility like ACRONIS.
External device initialization error
If the external hard drive or SSD does not initialize, then first make sure that it is turned on. Also check if the interface is correct. Try to replace the interface, connect to another SATA (or USB) connector on the motherboard. As in the case of the HDD, you should check if a drive letter is assigned to the device.
An SSD drive is designed differently from a hard drive, it does not have any rotating parts, and information is stored in special chips. Writing and reading data does not require moving the heads, which speeds up the process and increases the mechanical stability of the device. However, SSDs have a limited number of write cycles, and controllers that manage data fragmentation can fail due to power surges.
Keep in mind that SSD technology is developing rapidly, so it is better to check the features of your device on the Internet. If using the SATA interface, check if the BIOS is set to AHCI mode for the controller that controls your SSD. Update the drivers for this controller. Disk initialization type SSD With SATA interface may not pass due to a connection to a port with a large number. Such ports may be supported by additional controllers or may operate at lower speeds. You can recognize them by their color - ports that have a color other than SATA-1 should not be used.
Some drives come with software that allows you to transfer the operating system to them. If the problem occurs after such a migration, rebuild the system from scratch. If you have Windows XP installed, you may need to upgrade to a later version of the operating system. Perhaps you need to switch to latest version BIOS. See the video below for more details.
One of the main utilities command line in Windows- Diskpart, which first appeared in Windows XP and replaced Fdisk. Given software tool provides the ability to partition, format, initialize and resize disks, as well as create RAID arrays. Moreover, in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 it allows you to work with virtual disks. Let's see how to use Diskpart to prepare a hard drive, partition it, and format it.
At the command prompt, type diskpart and press Enter. Before us is our own Diskpart command environment - a kind of command line interface within the system. Typing "help" (or any other illegal command) and hitting Enter will display about three dozen commands. It is unlikely that anyone will explore 37 commands that can “scare away” from Diskpart; in fact, only eight commands are enough to use 99% of the product's capabilities.
If you've ever initialized a disk from the Logical Disk Manager graphical snap-in, you first need to click on the physical disk icon, then partition and format those partitions and name them - give them a letter. Diskpart follows the same pattern, requiring you to select a drive before partitioning it, before formatting it, etc. To select a particular drive, you type a command like this:
select disk
But what is the disk number you want to work with? Let's find out by typing the command:
List disk
which will produce the output shown in Figure 1. Diskpart numbers the disks starting from zero instead of one, and you can see that both disks store partition information in the Master Boot Record (MBR) rather than in the GUID Partition Table (GPT), and both disks are basic and not dynamic (because there are no values in the Dyn and Gpt columns).
Now I will complicate the task by saying that the system has two 24 GB disks: one contains the operating system and applications, and the second is just additional disk for data storage. Obviously, you don't want to accidentally clean up an operating system drive, so how do you know which drive is which? We use select disk along with detail disk. Let's start with disk 0 and see what's on it:
select disk 0
detail disk
The result is shown in Figure 2. Disk 0 is the data disk, so disk 1 must be the operating system disk. So let's work with right disk(disk0).
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Let's clean it up first by typing clean. This action does not clean up the disk by overwriting all of its data; cleaning erases the MBR, which is actually the "table of contents" of the disk. The old data is still on the disk, but the operating system can no longer get to it, so the data will be deleted by slow overwriting as soon as we start creating a new disk structure on top of the old one and saving the data to this new structure.
Next, the newly created disk needs at least one partition. The simplest method is to make one large partition on the disk using the create partition primary command. However, if you want to create multiple partitions on the disk, you must add the size= parameter followed by the size in megabytes. If I wanted to create two partitions—one 10 GB and the other 14 GB—I would first create the first partition by typing:
create partition primary size=10240
Remember that there are 1024 MB in a gigabyte, not 1000. I would then create a second partition by simply typing create partition primary, since the create partition command without the size= parameter instructs Diskpart to use whatever space is left on the hard drive. I can view the output by typing list partition.
So we have partitions, but they still need drive letters and formatting. How this is done, I will show in the next article.
Mark Minasi ([email protected]) - Windows editor IT Pro, MCSE and author of Mastering Windows Server 2003 (Sybex)
Unfortunately, not every user, when buying a new hard drive, imagines that after installing it in the system unit, it will immediately be impossible to work with the hard drive, believing that it is enough to insert the appropriate cables into it and fix it with screws, and the system will determine the device itself. First of all, after installing the equipment, the hard disk must be initialized. Windows systems will not do this automatically, so all operations will have to be carried out independently.
Installing a new hard drive
Before directly dealing with the problem of how to initialize a hard drive, you should deal with its correct installation in a system unit with a connection, observing some rules and precautions.
To do this, with the computer turned off and the power supply disconnected, you need to remove the side cover. Then, which is very important, before installing the hard drive into the slot, you should definitely remove the electrostatic charge from your body, in the simplest case, simply by touching with both hands the spout of a conventional water tap or the chassis of a disabled system block. After that, the hard drive is fixed with screws and connected to the motherboard appropriate cable and jumpers in compliance with the Master / Slave rule (main or dependent disk), after which the side cover of the case is installed in place.
Initializing the hard drive in the BIOS settings
Now you can start initial setup installed hard drive. First you need to turn on the computer and go to the settings section of the BIOS primary input / output system. Usually, the Del, F2 keys or some combinations are used for this, which will be shown on the monitor screen at the time of start.
Here in the main section, where all devices are shown, on this moment connected to the motherboard, find your hard drive, given it or IDE). If the hard drive is detected, you can proceed to the main setup using the BIOS exit followed by an automatic reboot. Otherwise, if the device is not in the list or the line Not Detected is present, after exiting and turning off the PC, you need to re-check the connection.
How to Initialize a Hard Drive: Windows Basic Tool
We proceed from the fact that the hard drive is defined in the BIOS. Now you need to initialize the disk. After a full boot, Windows will automatically recognize the new device and install the appropriate drivers for it (you can make sure that they are available by viewing the drivers folder in the System32 directory, where the disk.sys and partmgr.sys files will be present). At this stage, the disk itself is not visible in Explorer, although it is physically present in the system.
The disk is initialized using the system’s own tool in the section. You can call this section from the “Control Panel” through the administration system with the choice of the computer management menu or from the right-click menu on the computer icon, but using the Run console looks simpler and faster, in the line of which the diskmgmt.msc command is written.
and setting the boot record type
Now the disk is being initialized. First, we select our hard drive in the list of present devices (it can be labeled as “Disk 1”, “Disk 2”, etc.), after which we right-click to call up the menu and use the initialization string in it.
If the hard drive has a volume of more than 2 TB, you will need to set the GPT attribute (otherwise it will be impossible to use a large volume). If an error occurs while initializing the disk, you will need to take appropriate measures to eliminate it. This will be discussed separately.
Volume creation process
At the next stage, disk initialization involves the creation of a partition. This is done in order to computer system was able to "see" the disc.
On the selected disk, right-click again, and the creation line is selected from the context menu simple volume, after which the corresponding "Wizard" will open, in which the continue button is pressed.
Further, disk initialization provides for specifying the size of the created partition in megabytes (recalculate immediately, since 1 GB contains not a thousand, but 1024 MB). This is usually not required because the system specifies the volume size automatically.
At the next stage, you need to assign a letter to the section, by which it will be determined by the system. Here you need to be very careful not to give the disk an already occupied identifier, which may correspond to others. removable media(CD / DVD-ROM, USB devices, etc.), because in the future they may seem inoperative due to the fact that the system simply does not recognize them.
File system selection and formatting
Finally, disk initialization is approaching the final stage, at which it will be necessary to format the created partition.
Here, it is better to specify NTFS as the file system (it is considered more stable than FAT32, and can save files larger than 4 GB), leave it at the default value of 512 bytes (this will allow you to more economically distribute and use the resources of the created partition), enter the name that will be displayed in the system as the volume label ( file manager And context menus), and uncheck the quick format (for the first time, it is strongly recommended to perform a full format, which will avoid problems in the future). Directory compression should not be used, since this can only lead to a slowdown in the disk, related to the speed of reading or writing information to it.
Next, go to the completion window and, if all the parameters are set correctly, click the formatting start button (Finish). If any parameters need to be changed, the button to return to the previous menu is used. At the end of the process, the system will display a message on the screen in the form of an autorun window, if it is enabled. But sometimes you may get a warning that the disk has not been initialized.
What to do if initialization errors occur?
With new hard drives, there are usually no such problems. But if the system gives a message that the disk is not initialized, you can use the command line (cmd in the Run console) to fix it.
In it, it is first used to view and select the disk you need - list disk, and to clean the partition table - clean. After that, you can format manually using the create partition primary, select partition 1, active and format fs=ntfs commands sequence, which are entered without punctuation marks and pressing the enter key after each of them.
In other cases, you can use specialized programs like Partition Magic, but if none of the tools help, you will have to recheck the connections or look for malfunctions in the hard drive itself (perhaps this physical damage). For these cases, you can try to apply the program and then perform all the above operations again.
Today, quite often there are problems when loading the operating system. It has nothing to do with her performance. Sometimes situations arise when the hard drive does not initialize at all or other problems occur. In this article, we will consider several quite typical situations, as well as solutions that can be applied to them. It is worth mentioning right away that this article will not address issues related to physical wear and tear or hard drive breakdowns. Also, issues related to viral infection will not be considered.
Hard drive not initializing: possible problems
The most widespread situation is associated with the occurrence of breakdowns. But this will be discussed later. At the moment, several variants of problems can be identified, due to which the hard disk is not detected at all or initialized incorrectly. Among all that is described on the Internet, there are several of the most common situations:
- disk failure
- Wrong boot priority in BIOS;
- operating system failures;
- Disk errors.
What should I do if the hard disk does not initialize?
First of all, let's look at the most common mistake. Suppose there is a situation in which the WD hard drive is not initialized. The system in this case simply "spits". A message appears stating that the hard disk is not initializing (CRC error). This may indicate that the system partition has failed. This may have nothing to do with hard disk. To begin with, when at boot the system displays a message stating that the hard disk is not initializing, and the operating system cannot be loaded, you need to check the startup parameters in the primary I / O system or BIOS. The user, when receiving a message, will most likely see a notification indicating that the operating system boot device was not found. In this case, the simplest solution suggests itself - enable the initial boot from the hard disk in the BIOS settings.
Use of the system's own resources
If a download fails, it is recommended to first check checksums the CRC entries discussed earlier. This error may be similar to those that are sometimes observed when trying to unpack incompletely downloaded archives in the Win RAR program. The situation is basically the same. However, when booting the system, if it is functioning, you should initially simply check the disk with the option to automatically fix errors. It is clear that it is impossible to format the system partition in this case.
What if Windows boots from removable media?
The operating system can also be started from a removable device. In this case, the verification must be carried out immediately, without postponing the case for long box. For this purpose, you can use both the built-in commands of the operating system, and third party programs. In the simplest case, when the second system is on virtual disk, you can check it with the chkdisk command, specifying the disk label. Practice shows that this is usually not the problem. If the external hard drive refuses to initialize, then first you should check the cable connections. As it turns out, this is not the main problem. Maybe for external device the appropriate drivers are simply not installed, or they do not work correctly. Perhaps the device itself is simply not turned on. To check work external media, you can use the standard "Device Manager". You can call it either in the "Control Panel", or using the devmgmt.msc command in the "Run" console, which is present in any operating system of the Windows family.
What to do if the operating system does not boot: checking the status using the command line
If the system does not want to boot, then to check hard drives of any type, we can recommend booting from removable media using utilities such as Live CD or a Windows installation distribution kit that has a boot sector that allows you to open boot from external media, and not from a hard drive. If you are going to use the installer Windows distribution, then during the start process, you must press the combination Alt + F10 or use the R key to select the recovery console. After that, you need to write sfc / scannow on the command line. If you prefer the advanced option, then you must use the commands to restore the boot record: Bootrec.exe/FixMbr,Bootrec.exe/FixBoot, bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd. The last command is optional and can only be used to overwrite the boot area.
Recovery programs
As for applications that are capable of restoring the health of operating systems of the Windows family, it is quite difficult to make a choice here. You can recommend bootstrap utilities, as well as programs like HDD Regenerator. It is assumed that this application, running in DOS mode, is capable of remagnetizing a disk even if the hard disk is not recognized as such by the system.
Information recovery
It should be clear that the user does not see the boot sector on the HDD. Moreover, he does not see the section that is reserved for the start operation. This is the main problem. The thing is that this is not a file, but a reserved place on the hard disk, which is responsible for loading information in cases where there is not enough RAM. It can be disabled if there is enough RAM, since accessing RAM is many times faster than the same operation with respect to the hard disk. However, it is still possible to recover the information. To do this, you must use any program that allows you to do this. One of the most powerful programs this kind is considered R.Saver. It is recommended to download in advance safe mode or at least try to perform a system rollback if possible. This approach, in general, allows you to solve many problems, including some boot record errors. If this option does not bring the desired result, you will have to format the hard drive. However, overwriting boot sector using command timeline is worth it to take advantage of it. It is with the help of system commands that you can fix the MBR entry without using third-party tools. You may need to format the partition. After that, it will be possible to restore the necessary information. However, this will be possible only if the sector has not been overwritten, that is, after deleting the data, no files have been saved. Otherwise, nothing will work. In any case, you can try to do something. There will be nothing wrong with this.
What happens in the end? If the disk is not detected by the system at all, then first you need to check it for errors. On the other hand, if it is not possible to initialize the disk in the system, then it is necessary to use special programs, which are capable of recovering information on the HDD in the boot workspace. Even if you boot from removable media, you can solve many problems that relate to the start of the operating system. If the problem concerns the impact of viruses and other malicious objects, then in addition to disk programs under the general name Secure Disk nothing more can be advised. Dr.Web and Kaspersky Lab have similar software products. The essence of these programs is that they load their interface even before the start of the operating system. In this case, not only the hard drive is scanned, but also RAM, since viruses and executable programs can upload their files there. Thus, the problem associated with the fact that sometimes the hard disk is not initialized when the system boots up may be related to just such a situation.
Conclusion
If you give some recommendations in the end, it is best to use the check and restore commands from the command line. Although it works in DOS mode, it never fails and allows you to fix even those problems that cannot be fixed by the usual means of the operating system. If the disk is at the mounting stage, then you need to go to the disk management section and use the initialization command.
