Harddrive initializing is greyed out

Hi,

1)    What exactly happens when you try to connect it?

2)    Did you try to connect to a different USB port?

3)    Who is the drive manufacturer?

4)    Does your USB drive shows up in Windows Explorer?

5)    Does the drive work fine on a different computer?

Cause for a volume status not Initialized is -

The disk does not contain a valid signature. After you install a new disk, the operating system must write a disk signature, the end of sector marker (also called signature word), and a master boot record or GUID partition table before you can create partitions on the disk. When you first start Disk Management after installing a new disk, a wizard appears that provides a list of the new disks detected by the operating system. If you cancel the wizard before the disk signature is written, the disk status remains Not Initialized.

Method 1: Check disk

Check a drive for errors: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Check-a-drive-for-errors

Disclaimer: While performing chkdsk on the hard drive if any bad sectors are found on the hard drive when chkdsk tries to repair that sector if any data available on that might be lost.

Method 2:

Click on Start button, control panel.

Click on Administrative tools.

Click on Computer Management, and select Disk Management.

Right click on the USB drive and click mark the partition as active.

Method 3:  Initialize the disk.

The disk status briefly changes to Initializing and then Online status.

For instructions describing how to initialize a disk, see Initialize New Disks: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771486.aspx

Note:

The disk is initialized as a basic disk.

 Additional considerations:

New disks appear as Not Initialized. Before you can use a disk, you must first initialize it. If you start Disk Management after adding a disk, the Initialize Disk Wizard appears so you can initialize the disk.

Please let us know if this helps.