Disk unallocated, unable to initialise, unable to assign drive letter

After online researching, I ended up into this forum >> disk 1 is unknown, not initialized, unallocated

I downloaded the Partition Wizard from Jumanji's link, installed, and followed instructions until the end.

After assigning drive letter (G:\), the PW shows that it is indeed assigned to drive G:\ BUT, I still can't see it in My Computer so I checked Disk Management and it still shows the same status/problem as it was from the beginning.

Is/are there any further necessary step/s after assigning Drive letter to the recovered disk?

When I try to close the PW, it says "You are about to quit the program and cancel all pending operations. The changes you have made will be lost."

I don't know what to do from here. Please help

Thanks in advance..

OK, It could be a simple matter.

But I want to have a clear picture of what exactly your problem was.

1. Are we dealing with in internal drive or external drive?

2. Was the drive suddenly not accessible in My Computer?

3. Was it seen in Disk Management? What did it show? Even now you can take a screenshot of how the drive appears in Windows Disk Management and post it
Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

We will then proceed step by step. I am here for the next 11 or 12 hours but peep in once in an hour or two and follow up.

I know you had used PW. But we shall get on to it after you post the Windows Disk Management screenshot.

BTW what is your local time? If you are in USA you can go to sleep and come back after six or eight hours. No problem.

It's a laptop internal drive that became inaccessible after my bro ran chkdsk but cancelled in the middle of disk checking..

So, using an HDD reader then plugged it to another laptop and access it as external drive and that's how the problem arose.

I also tried to format it with installation CD, it shows 1 unallocated disk, but when I create a new partition, it doesn't want to.

It's GMT+8 in our country so it's almost 3pm here and btw, I'm at the office til 5pm..

here's a screen shot of Disk Management.

OK, Now run Partition Wizard and post a screenshot of how the drive looks in Partition Wizard.

Then run a quick scan with Partition Recovery Wizard in Partition Wizard. ( Follow the topic Recovery with Partition Wizard: SanDisk Cruzer Blade 16GB - in your case it will be your problem HDD ) in Recover a flash drive turned RAW – Partition Wizard and TestDisk.

After quick scan is completed, does it show the partitions found? Select the partition/partitions shown and double click on them. Does the Partition Explorer show the files? Please post the screenshots as in my thread above.

Edit: I missed your post#3. What is that HDD Reader? Ideally, I would have preferred recovery with the drive in its original location - the laptop.

Anyway, let us see what PW shows.

Oh, I already did that twice. It shows 1 partition (NTFS), and about 8-10 boot file with 3.01Mb size..

When I D-click the NTFS file, it only shows the USER Folder, no WINDOWS folder. But still, I followed the instructions until the "change drive letter", and changed it to drive G:\. PW says it's successful but when I clicked Apply and waited for it to finish, windows reported the program stopped working and needs to close..

It takes about 3 hours or less for the 500GB HDD, but now I only have less than 2 hours til closing time.

I can't bring home the HDD reader because it's office-owned. one more thing is it's Friday here and office resumes Monday

I am currently trying Damaged Partition Recovery, but again, it's 1 hr, 46 mins since I ran it and it's still at 11% (

BTW sir, is there any way to show the results of my previous scan? I used PW, and was able to recover and assign drive letter to the recovered disk on my first scan but it closed that's why I did a second scan (another almost 3 hours of waiting). Can i just view my previous scan and start from there?

jumanji said:

OK, Now run Partition Wizard and post a screenshot of how the drive looks in Partition Wizard.

Then run a quick scan with Partition Recovery Wizard in Partition Wizard. ( Follow the topic Recovery with Partition Wizard: SanDisk Cruzer Blade 16GB - in your case it will be your problem HDD ) in Recover a flash drive turned RAW – Partition Wizard and TestDisk.

After quick scan is completed, does it show the partitions found? Select the partition/partitions shown and double click on them. Does the Partition Explorer show the files? Please post the screenshots as in my thread above.

Edit: I missed your post#3. What is that HDD Reader? Ideally, I would have preferred recovery with the drive in its original location - the laptop.

Anyway, let us see what PW shows.

I detached the HDD from laptop because it doesn't boot, and when I tried to format with installation CD, it won't create a new partition from the unallocated disk space, therefore, it won't proceed to formatting the drive.

So I detached the HDD, hooked it to the reader, plugged the reader in another laptop and view it as an external drive but it doesn't show in My Computer and as shown on the screen shot I posted on its status in the Disk Management

melo7ultimate said:

jumanji said:

OK, Now run Partition Wizard and post a screenshot of how the drive looks in Partition Wizard.

Then run a quick scan with Partition Recovery Wizard in Partition Wizard. ( Follow the topic Recovery with Partition Wizard: SanDisk Cruzer Blade 16GB - in your case it will be your problem HDD ) in Recover a flash drive turned RAW – Partition Wizard and TestDisk.

After quick scan is completed, does it show the partitions found? Select the partition/partitions shown and double click on them. Does the Partition Explorer show the files? Please post the screenshots as in my thread above.

Edit: I missed your post#3. What is that HDD Reader? Ideally, I would have preferred recovery with the drive in its original location - the laptop.

Anyway, let us see what PW shows.

I detached the HDD from laptop because it doesn't boot, and when I tried to format with installation CD, it won't create a new partition from the unallocated disk space, therefore, it won't proceed to formatting the drive.

So I detached the HDD, hooked it to the reader, plugged the reader in another laptop and view it as an external drive but it doesn't show in My Computer and as shown on the screen shot I posted on its status in the Disk Management

So your aim is to format the drive and not data recovery. Yes /No

Put the HDD back into laptop and from the installation DVD run diskpart clean all. Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Once the clean all completes, reinstall Windows formatting the drive.

To fix the damage of the HDD in order to recover the files (if possible) and to be able to format it. Which are all impossible at the moment. I was trying to recover the files but there was a time that I gave up on it and just went to formatting the drive but was surprised when I can't even format the HDD as the unallocated disk space cannot be allocated. When I click NEW (new partition) in the Windows Installation GUI and set the size, it just comes back to Unallocated Disk Space, therefore, the FORMAT button is disabled