Windows 7 - Brand new 1.5TB Extension not recognised - cannot "initialise"

I'm posting this out of the extended external hard drive recognition thread because my problem is slightly different.

Windows detects my external HDD but doesn't show up in My Computer. Drive is detected in Disk Management, described as "not initialized". When I try to initialize the drive though, it gives me the following error:

"The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error".

I'm running windows 7 on a sony vaio laptop. Also, I tried the drive on another laptop, and it works perfectly.


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Literally pulling my hair out over this (seriously its gross, my office desk is covered in hair), so ANY and ALL advice is greatly appreciated!!

Welcome to Seven Forums severussnape11. you did it right by starting a new thread.

how is the external connected?
You can download Partition Wizard Free and see if it will let you initialize and format the drive.
Is this a brand-new out-of-the-box drive?

Try this:

1. From RUN, type diskpart and click OK
2. At the DISKPART prompt, type automount
3. From the Device Manager , find the device not being recognized. It could be under storage devices
4. Right click on the device and choose Properties
5. Click on the Driver tab
6. Click Uninstall
7. Unplug the device
8. Plug the device back in.

This solution seems to have worked for many.

Try using diskpart from an elevated cpmmand prompt. (click start, in the search box type cmd, in the cmd entry that appears, right click it and select 'run as administrator) Give adninistrative permission. In the box that opens type diskpart and press enter, it will take a few seconds and the cmd prompt will respond diskpart. Type list disk and press enter. It will show all disk drives connected to your computer and show the sizes. It will give each one a number. On a laptop it will probably be disk 2. type select disk 2 (or whatever disk it is numbered) It will reply disk 2 is the selected disk. type create partition primary and press enter. (this will create 1 partition of the whole drive. If you want to partition it into different sizes, the command will be create partition primary size= 102400 which is 100GB. Enter the size you want in MB with 1024 MB=1GB. If you do this, create the rest of the drive in another partition. If you put no size in the command it will create a partition of the entire disk) So, create partiotion primary and enter will create 1 large partition. It will respond with diskpart created the specified partition. Then type format fs-ntfs quick and press enter. In a few seconds it will reply diskpart formatted the specified partition. type assign and press enter. That will assign it a drive letter. It will respond that diskpart has assigned it a drive letter. Type exit and press enter (do this twice) and the window will close. You should see the drive in computer. As an example, I formatted a USB drive as an example. You won't have as many drives as me. I selected disk 4 because you can tell by the sizt it is a 2GB USB drive. Again, yours will probably be disk 2. This is what it will look like.

Almost all external hard drives come preformatted. The OP has further said that the drive works on another computer. So my assumption is that the filesystem exists and hence the automount suggestion. ( if for some reason automount got disabled I presume that the drive will appear not initialised and not mounted)

That said, there is absolutely no problem formatting the drive again in this particular instance since it is new and there is no data in it. I am curious to know whether the drive is listed in diskpart.

I would assume it would show up in diskpart if it shows in disk management. In disk management, make sure it says online in the left column. If it says offline, right click offline and select online.

hi everyone, i just woke up, but wow thanks for all the responses. ill go through them now one by one and see what works and what doesnt, then get back to you all!

thanks again

okay, starting with jumanji - i thought this had worked, because i box at the bottom came up saying 'seagate drive xyz installed..' and that hadnt happened before, but in the end it didnt

essenbe - when i got the the 'create partition primary' step, diskpart responded saying 'Diskpart has encountered an error: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. See the System Event Long for more information.' damn . thank you both for the very thorough and easy to follow instructions however. any suggestions where something may have gone wrong?

have to go to christmas lunch now, but will be back soon!

My only recommendation would be to download Seagates diagnostic test, Seatools and see if there is a problem with the drive.

When the drive was installed how did it look in the Disk Management? Was it the same as before or anything different?

Did you check the Device Manager? And what did you find?

If in case you do find it in the Device Manager with an exclamation mark, you can try the following resolution.

Symptoms:
USB shows in the device manager (right click on my computer and click manage, devices) either "Unknown USB device" or "name of USB hard drive manufacturer" both of which have the yellow ! next to them saying they aren't installed correctly.
Resolution :
Right click on the device in the device manager that shows it isn't installed, click update driver software, enter this location assuming your C drive is your main drive
"C:\Windows\winsxs" and ensure the box is checked to include subfolders and hit ok. It should reinstall immediately and show up as a new drive in "My Computer"
You may have to uninstall the device first, replug it back in and then run through the above steps.