Windows 10: External hard drive shows up as "Unknown" and "Not initialized"

I have an external hard drive that I mainly use to store games, among other things, and it's been working just fine until now. Whenever I plug it in, I am not able to access any of the files that are on it through File Explorer neither am I able to download things onto the hard drive. I opened Disk Management, and when I scrolled down, instead of the name and drive letter I gave it, it simply shows up as "Disk 2" and that it's also "Unknown" and "Not Initialized", I have tried to initialize it but I can't click on "Initialize Disk". I have tried other fixes, such as unplugging it and plugging

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not ready, unknown, not initialized, unallocated external hard drive

please I need help on how to format an external hard drive which disk management describes as unknown, not initialized and unallocated. when I try to initialized using both diskpart and disk management, it says disk is not ready.

 

unknown, Not initialize, unallocated external hard disk want to initialize

I wanted to initialize unknown, unallocated,not initialize external hard disk, but when I go to disk manager and try to initialize the message pop up "Virtual disk manager access denied".

Secondly, drive do not have any letter, and I CAN'T to assign letter to drive (in order to go for chkdsk in prompt command). when I right click on unknown & unallocated drive then there is only option left are properties help and offline.

My question is how can I initialize the drive or bring the status online in order to assign drive letter and initialize the disk?

 

External Hard Drive

Hi John,

We suggest that you try the troubleshooting steps below:

• Open your External Hard Drive file in File Explorer.
• Type the name of the file you want to search on the search box and click Enter.

The file will show up in Search Results and you will be able to move it to the correct folder.

Let us know if you need further help.