Click for larger image.Ĭlick on Change Drive Letter and Paths… Change drive letter and path dialog.Īs you can see, the drive can’t be accessed because the list of the ways to access it is empty.
Right-clicking a disk in Disk management. Right-click on the drive in question in either the top or lower pane (lower pane shown). It’s been successfully attached to the system, but for one reason or another, a letter hasn’t been assigned. While I don’t have a specific reason 2, I believe this to be the common cause for a large number of “functioning properly” but still inaccessible disks.
HDD NOT SHOWING UP IN DISK MANAGEMENT WINDOWS
Yet it has no drive letter, and as a result, does not appear in Windows File Explorer. That’s my 16GB thumb drive (and yes, drives labelled 16GB may show as 15GB because of the way disk space numbers can be (mis)used. The name comes from the label of the single partition on the disk that is 15GB in size. The more problematic disk is the one named “NOTEN15GB”. It’s a small partition, and I didn’t bother to take the time to remove it.
In this case, the clue is that my external hard disk is a G-Drive branded disk, and the “G-UTILITIES” partition is likely to be utilities that came with the drive. Many disks come with multiple partitions some contain utility or recovery tools. This is extremely common, and not related to our problem at all. “G-UTILITIES” is a partition on my (working) external drive. While my primary disk’s single partition is listed with drive letter “C:”, and one of my external disk’s partition is listed with drive letter “D:”, there are a couple of drives there that have no letter at all. Notice something interesting?ĭrive list in Disk Management.
Let’s widen the first column of information in the upper pane listing the drives in my example, and look closely. The more common case, though, is that the disk appears in Disk Management but still doesn’t appear in Windows File Explorer. If this is an external disk, see if it’ll work on a different computer. If the disk does not appear at all when you plug it in, or if you cannot find it listed based on its characteristics, then you’re likely looking at a hardware problem. For example, if you know you have a 1TB disk that’s working and a 16GB disk that’s not, if you find a 16GB disk listed, you can be fairly certain that this is the disk we want. That could be the name of a partition on it, or more commonly, the size of the disk as compared to the other disks on your system. In Disk Management, see if there is a disk listed that matches what you know about the disk you’re trying to access. Internal and already-connected drivesįor internal disks (or disks that for whatever reason can’t be unplugged and plugged in again), we have to hunt a little. That implies the hardware is working and the drive is being recognized by Windows. If a new entry appears in Disk Management’s lower pane, that’s very good news. The top pane lists all partitions on all disks, and the lower pane lists all disks with the partitions they contain displayed in boxes alongside. The Disk Management utility shows you all connected disks, memory card readers (which may or may not have cards inserted), and optical drives (which may or may not have discs inserted). (In prior versions of Windows, right-click on “Computer” or “My Computer” on your desktop or in the Start menu, click on Manage, and in the resulting Computer Management window, click on Disk Management.) Disk Management utility. In Windows 10, right-click on the Start button and click on Disk Management. (If this is an internal disk, it’ll have to stay connected. We’ll start with your problematic disk disconnected. Use Windows Disk Management to assign a drive letter manually by right-clicking on the drive, selecting “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”, and clicking on “Add…”. When this happens, the hard drive will not show in Windows File Explorer, even though it’s otherwise working. A disk can sometimes be connected and not have a drive letter assigned to it.