I recently got a friend's NVME drive back from Dell after they said it couldn't be repaired. I tried to transfer the data using a budget USB-to-NVME adapter, but now I'm facing a "disk not initialized" error on my new Windows 11 PC. This lady has already had a rough time with her computer, which suffered a motherboard and CPU failure while still under warranty. I'm hoping to salvage her data, so I'm curious—could the cheap adapter be causing this issue? And if it is, would a higher quality adapter help avoid these kinds of errors?
3 Answers
Honestly, if Dell had the drive and could not fix it, there’s a chance it could be defective. Sometimes drives can fail for various reasons, including heat issues, especially with those higher-end models. The error message you're seeing usually means the drive wasn't initialized properly, but that could also mean the drive experienced some sort of failure. If you have the drive's serial numbers, checking if it’s been swapped out might help clear things up.
It's a real possibility that the cheap adapter is the culprit here. I've seen quite a few budget adapters cause issues, especially with NVME drives. If you can, try another adapter or even insert the NVME directly into a spare M.2 slot on a different PC. If it still shows up as uninitialized, then it could indicate a problem with the drive itself, rather than the adapter.
In my experience, the "disk not initialized" error can happen when the drive is brand new and hasn't been set up yet. It might not always mean it's fried. However, if you were expecting data on it and it shows this message, it leads to some bad news. Just to be safe, take it to a repair shop as planned and see if they can retrieve anything, and consider using a good quality adapter for future transfers.
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