How Can I Create an Image of an Uninitialized Drive?

macos tips
1

I connected an external USB drive, but it didn’t mount and the Disk Utility shows its volume type as “Uninitialized”.
What does this mean, and how can I save an image of this drive?

2

“Uninitialized” usually means the drive doesn’t have a reading/writing file system, or it might not be partitioned properly. It could also indicate a damaged or corrupted drive. Don’t worry, you can check the file system first in Disk Utility.

  1. If it is an NTFS-formatted drive, you can only read but not write the drive on Mac. You’d better utilize some NTFS drivers like iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, which enables you read and write the drive seamlessly on Mac.
  2. If it’s others. Open Terminal and use the diskutil list command to identify the drive. It’ll look like /dev/diskX. Then type sudo dd if=/dev/diskX of=/path/to/save/image.dmg bs=1m (Replace diskX with your actual disk number).
3

The uninitialized disk on Mac means there may be something wrong with your drive, so firstly, you can recover all data first.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is an effective tool, which can recover data from uninitialized disks.
Or you can try to update the driver, run First Aid in Disk Utility, or reinstall macOS.
Learn more: Fix Uninitialized Disk on Mac Without Losing Data