Hi,

I have an external drive I've been using for about a year now but suddenly it's no longer available to use. If I go to disk managment it says there is an Unknown disk that needs to be Initialized. I'm ASSUMING that's my external disk so I don't want to initalise it because I think that might erase the data on it. I think I'm in a catch 22 as I can't run anything to fix the drive because the computer won't see it fully anymore. I read about something called ChkDsk which will repair bad drives but I don't think I can do that because of the disk not being detected properly.

Is there a way out of this?

Thanks for reading,
Dan... dictation...
Here are some general things you can check. The first thing to try is to see if your external disk drive can be seen on another computer. That will help eliminate the possibility of some kind of difficulty with your computer.
If the problem appears to be the external drive, here are some things you can check:
external drives often have external power supplies. These power supplies to age with time, depending on the quality of the materials used in construction.
The hard drive mechanism itself can be having difficulty. It could have been damaged or simply got stuck. Once in a while I'll hard drive does get stuck because of environmental conditions.
There is also the possibility that the USB interface inside the external drive is not working correctly. It could be just a loose connection between the USB drive adapter and the hard drive itself. In a few cases the contacts become OXIDIZED and simply removing and inserting the contacts over again for both the data and the power connection might help. Still, that is the least likely thing. It is mentioned only because it's EASY to check.
It may be possible to hook your external drive by itself into your computer system. Desktop computers usually have some privation for adding a second hard drive. If that is the case, you could then try using the it external hard drive itself inside your desktop case if you have the right connectors for power and data.
My best guess is that the failure is either the external power supply or the USB adapter itself. Although hard drive still fail quite often, my experience has been that the USB adapters are sometimes very low quality. It depends.
Most likely your external drive adapter is outside of warranty by now. Nevertheless, I suspect that the hard drive itself is still usable, but you'll have to get it to work on another computer.
If you have any questions, please ask in I or somebody else will try to link you to the site that shows how to replace a hard drive or to make a hard drive the slave inside of a working computer.
Pardon any errors you see in my grammar. I did this in a hurry to get back to you as soon as possible 

I've accidentally cmd cleared my external HDD in the past, which erased the HDD so much so, that it forgot it was a HDD lol.

Was trying to reformat it but I wasn't as tech literate then as I am now and got ahead of myself.
This particular episode couldn't really be done by accident, buuuut the solution may be just as useful in your case.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/281191-32-accidently-diskpart-cleaned-external-hard-disk
(hopefully it's okay to link to other forums?)

I will warn you though, if you don't know what you're doing, you could lose all of your data. It's possible that the Master File Table (MFT) became corrupted some how.

If it's suuuuper important data, there are tech places you can take it to that will disassemble the drive and place the platters in a reader. They then reconstruct the Master File Table and poop out a usable drive with all your goodies as if nothing ever happened.

I don't think this is a cheap operation, but I could be wrong.

Good Luck
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Edit: This may be helpful as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofkbj_siQDsParting shot.
To underscore the value of a good backup, consider how much easy byte is worth. A PENNY? If so, the one million bytes of data is worth $10,000 and a gigabyte is more  money than most of us  ever have.
Free CLOUD services are out there. Google drive is one.
And a DVD-R can hold about 4.7 GB and cost about 50 cents.
If you have an old working HDD laying in your junk box , buy a USB adapter and use it as a DIY backup device.
So a small invest in time and money can  prevent a real PITA.