WD EXTERNAL HARD DISK 1TB suddenly "unallocated" and "not initialized"

Ok, jumanji is ok with resetting the readonly flag, and I agree that will not change the characteristic drive failure.

It will eliminate one item and possibly show that the electronics are the cause.

When you're ready to reset the readonly flag:

1. Disconnect any other external drives form the Win8 machine
   
   
2. Connect the faulty drive to a USB 2.0 port on the Win8 machine
   
   
3. Post a Disk Management screen shot. See: Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image
   
   
4. Open an Elevated Command Prompt
   Enter the following commands and post a screen shot of Command Prompt.
   After I see the lists of disk, partitions and volumes as presented by Diskpart; and know that the correct disk is selected, I'll post exact commands.
   
   I based the disk selection on your previous Diskpart that showed it as disk 1 when it was connected to the Win8 machine. This can change if you have other drives connected or are on a different machine with more internal drives.
   
   If you are certain that the faulty disk is disk 1, then you can enter the next commands. You might want to check that the readonly flag is set with a det dis command. It won't hurt anything to reset the flag on a drive that isn't marked readonly, but it makes Windows refresh a lot of stuff.
   
   
   Diskpart
   sel dis 1
   lis dis
   lis par
   lis vol

Are you sure disk 1 is the faulty drive?
You might want to check that the readonly flag is set with a det dis command. It won't hurt anything to reset the flag on a drive that isn't marked readonly, but it makes Windows refresh a lot of stuff.

Ok, if you're sure
Still in command prompt and
still in Diskpart
I can't give you the select and attribute commands for the volumes since I won't know if any volumes are presented for that drive (doubtful, but possible) .

attrib dis clear readonly
det dis

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Post another screen shot of the command prompt that shows the resulting details for the disk. Once you have the screen captured, you can exit out of Diskpart and exit out of command prompt.

Ok, that drive exhibits symptoms one of my drives exhibited.
Rescan tells windows to update drive information.

Go ahead and rescan the disks
in Diskpart type
rescan
- then repeat all of the the commands to clear readonly

If you get the Disk Service error again, follow the instructions at the bottom of the screen

jumanji said:

.....
To me it looks like a fault in the interface electronics inside the HDD. Remember I recommended that if you want to buy an external HDD for saving the data, you may better buy the same brand same model so that the interface card can finally be changed if data recovery efforts by any software fails. Even the read only tag removal suggested by Slartybart will fail in such a case. ( If it goes through, well and good and that is not going to change your data.) But then if that fails we will surely know there is an electronic fault.

In any case changing the interface card is better left to a capable professional.

Every individual's temperament is different and if the tasks seem daunting, exasperating and gets on your nerves, you may sure pass it on to data recovery experts and save your health.

Ok, it's definitive then. junmaji pointed to hardware and now we know.

A last ditch effort, safely remove the drive
Restart the computer
connect the drive
run PW

I updated my post 58 to include the information jumanji posted. Please read and follow.

Bad disk? It most likely means a trip to the shop, jumanji offered some advice on a possible do it yourself solution, but that might be a challenge for most people - other members might disagree and offer suggestions.

I'll wait to see how the restart and next PW report on the drive. Then I'm off to bed.

Best of luck,

Bill