The Device Is Not Ready in Windows 7/8/10/11 (Fixed)

About the device is not ready problem

“The device is not ready” error may occur when you attempt to access data from hard drive, USB flash drive, pen drive, DVD drive, SD card, etc. This error is caused by different reasons. Here, I’ll show you the common reasons in the following:

• The external storage device is not well connected, like the device is loosely connected to the computer, the connector is broken, or USB port is damaged.

• The digital device is damaged.

• Compatibility issue between the computer and external digital device.

• File system error. In Disk Management, the device with file system error is marked as raw format.

How do I fix the device is not ready in Windows 7/8/10/11?

• The device is not ready on external hard drive
• The device is not ready because of file system error
• SFC Scannow to fix the device is not ready
• CMD error - the device is not ready on CD/USB drive
• The device is not ready in Diskpart
• The device is not ready in Disk Management

► The device is not ready on external hard drive

✔ Re-connect the drive to different USB port

If you receive the error on external hard drive, you can try to check the connection issue with the following steps. It’s one of the reasons why you receive NOT READY ERROR.

Step 1. Plug out the device and plug it into the same port. If the error disappears, that’s a connection issue. If it occurs again, see step 2.

Step 2. Plug out the device and plug it into a different port on the same computer. If the error disappears, that means the previous USB port is damaged. If it occurs again, see Step 3.

Step 3. Plug the device out and plug it into a different computer. If the error disappears, it implies that the device is damaged and the problem is caused by a damaged USB port.

✔ Re-install the device driver

If the device driver is not installed, corrupted or missing, you will receive the warning message as well. Try to re-install the device driver.

Step 1. Type device manager in the search box, right-click it and select Open.

Step 2. Find out the device that is not ready, right-click the device and select Uninstall.

Step 3. Keep your device connected and restart the PC. Windows will attempt to re-install the driver.

► The device is not ready because of file system error

✔ CHKDSK utility to fix the device is not ready

Step 1. Right click the drive that with file system error or bad sectors and select Properties.
Step 2. Click the Tools tab and Check option under the Error checking section. It will check the file system errors.

Step 3. Click Scan and repair drive and then restart your computer to make the changes available.

Note: This also works for bad sectors. It will repair the bad sector it finds.

✔ CMD to fix “the device is not ready”

Step 1. Type cmd in the search box, right click it and select Run as administrator.

Step 2. Type chkdsk G:/f in the command prompt and hit Enter to run it. Replace G: with the correct drive letter in your case.

► SFC Scannow to fix the device is not ready

If you think the system file is corrupted or damaged, you can try SFC Scannow command. It will fix the error its find.

Step 1. Open the command prompt and run as administrator.

Step 2. Type sfc /scannow in the window and hit Enter.

► CMD error - the device is not ready on CD/USB drive

If you use CMD to access CD/DVD drive that does not have media inside or a card reader that does not have a card in it, you will receive this error.

If it’s a flash drive, you need to confirm its drive letter first. If it’s correct, your flash drive may be broken and probably needs to be replaced.

► The device is not ready in Diskpart

If your disk is failed or the storage controller on your main board is corrupted, you will receive the following error.

✔ Diskpart has encountered an error.

The device is not ready.

To fix it, you can try to run the troubleshooter to fix hardware issues or directly uninstall the storage controller. Here, I’ll show you how to run troubleshooter.

Step 1. Type Troubleshooter or Troubleshooting in the search box and select it from the list.

Step 2. Under the Hardware and Sound link, click Configure a device.

Step 3. Click Advanced and tick Apply repair automatically in the new window.

Step 4. Click Next to start the pending operation and repair the issues it finds.

► The device is not ready in Disk Management

In this part, you will see 3 situations, including the device is not initialized, the disk is online but marked as unallocated space, the drive becomes raw file system. See below and try to fix the error.

✔ Not initialized - the device is not ready

If you fail to initialize the disk which is not recognized by Windows and show as Not Initialized, you will receive the following error message.

Virtual Disk Manager

The Device is not ready.

And then, you need to initialize disk to fix the device is not ready.

Step 1. Press Win+R to summon the Run window, typediskmgmt.msc in the box and then press OK to open Disk Management.

Step 2. In the Initialize Disk windows, tick Disk 1(the disk is not initialized), select partition style (GPT or MBR) and click OK to start the pending operation. If you cannot see this window, right-click the disk not initialized, select Initialize Disk.

✔ Unallocated space - the device is not ready

For this situation, you can try to create a new partition on the unallocated space. But if you think the partition is not empty, you try to recover partition first.

Step 1. Go to Disk Management, right-click the unallocated space, and then choose New Simple Volume from the list.

Step 2. Follow the wizard until the last step and then clickFinish to start the pending operation.

✔ RAW file system – the device is not ready on hard drive

To fix RAW file system, you can choose to convert to NTFS or FAT32 file system. And then, you can access your hard drive again.

Diskpart to fix the device is not ready on disk

Step 1. Open CMD and run as administrator.

Step 2. Type diskpart in the command prompt window and hit Enter.

Step 3. Type the following commands in order and hit Enter to run it.

list disk

select disk n (n is the RAW hard drive)

online disk (if it is not online)

attributes disk clear readonly

clean

convert mbr (or convert gpt)

create partition primary

select part 1

active (if it is the boot drive)

format fs=ntfs label=new quick (new is the volume label and you replace it with a desired name)

list volume (you should be able to see a NTFS formatted partition)

exit

✔ Partition manager to recover RAW partition to NTFS

If you are not familiar with command prompt, you can try free partition manager AOMEI Partition Assistant. With it, you can format RAW to NTFS without any hassle. All the steps are fixed and there is a little chance to make a mistake.

Step 1. Download AOMEI Partition Assistant, install and launch it. Right click the RAW partition and select Format Partition.

Step 2. Select file system from the drop-down menu.

Step 3. Click Apply to start the process.

Besides, you can format RAW file system to FAT32 and fix errors related to RAW file system, such as, chkdsk report raw error, convert is not available for raw partition, etc. Also, you can use it do other things, such as, move partition to end of the disk, convert GPT to MBR, fix the virtual service disk error the volume size is too big, and so on.

However, you will find that some features are only available on the paid version, such as convert system disk from GPT to MBR, allocated free space, migrate OS from GPT disk to MBR SSD, and more. In these cases, you need to upgrade toAOMEI Partition Assistant Professional to deal with issues on the GPT disk, or Server edition based on the operating system you are using now.

The way forward

“The device is not ready” error in Windows 7/8/10/11 occurs due to various reasons. From above, you can get the common reasons why you receive the error and corresponding solutions. You can try above method one by one and find the one works for you.