Fixes for Uninitialized External Hard Drive on Mac

"My external hard drive has been used on Mac for a long time without any issues. However, when I connect it to the Mac today, the system indicates it's not readable and needs to be initialized. How to fix the issue and make the drive usable again?"

Normally, a brand new and unused external hard drive will be showing as uninitialized. Before you use it, you have to initialize and create a partition first. If a working external hard drive becomes uninitialized suddenly, there should be some issues. The article will guide you to troubleshot and fix the issue that the external hard drive is not initialized on Mac.

If the drive becomes uninitialized on Mac, you cannot see it directly in Finder. Also, you are not able to access it or store data on the drive. Some issues will cause the issue. To find out the clues and try to fix the issue, please read on and we will show you some solutions.

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Why the external hard drive will become uninitialized?

If an external hard drive was working normally before but became uninitialized somehow, there are different reasons. Here are the common causes that will lead to the issue that external drive is not initialized on Mac:

• Connection issues with the external hard drive, like cable, interface, or port.
• Physical damages for the hard drive or connection socket/port.
• Cannot see the connected USB flash drive in Finder.
• Virus infection will also cause damage to the drive and make it uninitialized.
• Partition on the external hard drive is lost and the drive becomes uninitialized.
• If there are some bad sectors, it will lead to an uninitialized issue.
• The file system on the drive becomes corrupted/damaged/crashed.

Once the external hard drive is not initialized, you can try some methods to fix the issue and make the external hard drive usable again. Also, if there are important files on the external hard drive, we will show you the solution to retrieve the lost files back from the uninitialized external hard drive.

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4 fixes for the issue that external drive becomes uninitialized

To help you fix the uninitialized issue for the external hard drive on Mac, we will check and introduce 4 easy and commonly used solutions to you.

Method 1. Restart your Mac computer.

Restart the machine is always the first choice to solve many issues. Sometimes, you cannot ensure the reason for the issue. But a reboot can help you solve the issue easily in most cases. Please just unplug the external hard drive from your Mac, and then restart the Mac directly.

After the Mac is restarted, you can connect the external hard drive to check if it works. Also, if you have other computers, you can connect the external hard drive to another computer and check if it can be accessed directly. If it still doesn't work, you will have to try some other methods as showing below.

Method 2. Reconnect your external hard drive.

The connection issue will also make the external hard drive showing as uninitialized on Mac. We suggest you check the connection of the external hard drive. First, please check the port of the computer. You can change to another port and reconnect the external hard drive.

Also, please check and change a connection cable to check if the external hard drive will be recognized and accessed normally on Mac.

Besides, you can also connect the external hard drive with a USB hub or dock. If you are using a Mac laptop, we suggest you have a try with a powered USB adaptor/USB.

Method 3. Initialize and format the external hard drive.

If there are no unknown issues with the system or the connection, you can try to initialize the external hard drive directly on Mac. If you connect an uninitialized external hard drive to Mac, it will pop up a window and ask to initialize the drive. Please click the Initialize… button to continue.

It will go to Disk Utility and show you the uninitialized external hard drive. To initialize the external hard drive, you can just erase and partition the disk directly. Then the external hard drive will be initialized and partitioned. Please click the Erase button to select a file system for the drive.

After the process is done, you will have a new partition on the drive. Then you can access and reuse it again.

Method 4. Fix the uninitialized issue with Disk Utility.

If there are some other issues, like file system crashes, you can also try to fix the drive in Disk Utility. Please click Go > Utilities > Disk Utility. Then you will see the uninitialized external hard drive. You can right-click the drive and choose First Aid, select the drive and click the First Aid button at the top of the Disk Utility window. It will start to fix the issues automatically. You can just wait patiently.

Once the fix process is done, you can check if the external hard drive is accessible again.

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How to recover data from an uninitialized external hard drive?

If your external hard drive is not initialized and there were important files on the drive, you will want to get back the files instead of fixing the drive simply. How to recover files from an uninitialized external hard drive? The easy way to recover the data is to use data recovery software. Donemax Data Recovery for Mac is such simple and reliable software that can recover data from an uninitialized external hard drive.

It's comprehensive data recovery software that can recover files in different data loss scenarios. It can recover lost data from formatted drives, damaged drives, the crashed system, etc. To recover the lost files from an uninitialized external hard drive, please download the software first.

Install the software on your Mac and launch the data recovery software. Then do as follows step by step to recover the lost data from the drive.

Step 1. Run the software and you can see the connected drives on the Mac. Please check and ensure to select the uninitialized external hard drive in the software.

Step 2. Scan the drive to search for lost files by clicking on the Scan button. It will deeply scan the drive and try to find all the lost files from the drive.

Step 3. After the scan is done, all the found files will be listed in the software. Please check and choose the wanted files to recover to another drive.

Please keep an eye on your disk status frequently. You can also try to check the disk health with a professional tool. Also, we suggest you install anti-virus software to protect your drive/data from virus infection. If you have important data on your drive, please also back up your data regularly.

If you encounter any issues on Mac and cause data loss on your drive, please stop using the drive and try to recover the data immediately. Donemax Data Recovery for Mac is the best data recovery software that we recommend for you. It can restore deleted/lost data quickly and effectively from an external hard drive, internal drive, memory card, or USB flash drive.