disk management does not initialize

Question

disk management does not initialize my external hard drive

Answer 1

Try these commands one-by-one (replace # with disk number not initialize):

diskpart

list disk

select disk #

clean

exit

Answer 2

Please be careful, using the Initialize operation in the Disk Management utility may delete all data on that drive.

If you connect that external drive to your PC is it not recognised in File Explorer?

If not, try connecting that drive to another PC to test if that drive works correctly in that PC.

If not, what happened to the external drive before this problem started, was it dropped, or was it ever connected to a Mac PC and formatted in the Mac?