Hard drive not visible or detected in Windows?

Is your new or old hard drive, internal or external, and not visible in File Explorer or Disk Management?

This guide provides comprehensive information on why your computer cannot detect your hard drive. It also provides valuable guidance on how to retrieve important data from an unrecognized hard drive, offering effective solutions to get your computer to recognize your hard drive again.

Why isn’t my hard drive visible in Windows?

Note: If your hard drive is physically damaged or broken, send it to a local repair center or manufacturer for repair. The fixes shown below only serve to fix logical errors that are preventing your drive from appearing on computers.

If your hard drive is not detected or does not appear in Disk Management, it may have one of the following symptoms. It could be a connection issue, driver issue, faulty BIOS settings, or any other issue as shown below:

Rest assured, all these problems can be solved. To make your internal or external hard drive appear in Windows once again, simply follow the solutions explained in the coming sections.

Part 1: How to fix HDD not showing in Windows 10

This guide applies to both internal and external hard drives and will help you fix your drive not detected or recognized issue in Windows 10/8/7.

We’ve carefully compiled six potential solutions for you to try. Choose an appropriate method based on the current condition of your hard drive and follow these steps to get your drive back to working order:

• Solution 1. Change disk connection
• Solution 2. Reformat the hard disk to NTFS
• Solution 3. Recover data and create a new partition
• Solution 4. Change hard drive letter
• Solution 5. Update the hard disk disk drive
• Solution 6. Initialize disk in BIOS, create volume and enable disk

Fixes 1 through 5 are recommended for a used hard drive. If your new hard drive is not recognized, try solution 3 and solution 6.

Let’s start solving the problem of your hard drive not being recognized:

Solution 1. Change Disk Mount – Fix Hard Drive Not Appearing in File Explorer

This solution applies if your internal or new hard drive is not detected in File Explorer or Disk Management.

Connection problems are often caused by faulty cables or loose connections. Here’s how you can fix your hard drive connection issue and make it detectable on your computer. This can also fix problems with files not appearing on your hard drive.

• Step 1: Inspect the cables. If the power cable or SATA cable is damaged, replace it with a new one.
• Step 2: Remove and securely attach your hard drive using the SATA and power cables.
• Step 3: Restart your computer to see if the hard drive is detected.

Solution 2. Format Hard Drive to NTFS – Fix Hard Drive Not Detected with RAW or Corrupt File System

This solution applies to hard drive that is not detected due to unsupported, RAW or damaged file system.

If your hard drive displays as RAW or “*Others” in Disk Management, this indicates a file system error on your hard drive.

In such cases, the best solution is to reformat the drive to a supported file system. Here’s how you can do this:

• Step 1: In Windows 10/8, press Windows + X and select “Disk Management”.
  • For Windows 7, right-click the Start icon and select “Search.” Type and click “disk management”.
• Step 2: Locate and right-click your hard drive, then select “Format.”
• Step 3: Set the file system to NTFS, check the “Perform quick format” option and click “OK” to start formatting the drive.

Solution 3. Restoring Data and Creating New Partition – Fix Unallocated Hard Drive Not Showing

This solution applies to cases where the hard drive is not detected but appears as unallocated or unknown, or a new hard drive appears as uninitialized in Disk Management.

If a previously used hard drive is suddenly not detached, this may be due to accidental deletion, a virus attack, or other unidentified reasons that lead to loss of partition on your disk.

In such scenarios, your first step should be to recover all data from unallocated space. Following this, you can create new volume(s) on the disk to make the hard drive detectable again.

1. Recover Data from Unallocated Hard Drive

Use professional hard drive recovery software such as EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. It can completely scan a lost partition and retrieve your files from unallocated hard drive space.

The software will identify the unallocated space on your disk as the lost partition and allow you to directly select that space for a scan to recover all data on the drive:

• Step 1. Select the drive where your data was lost and click “Search Lost Data”

• Step 2. When the scan is complete, use the “Filter” or “Search” options to find your lost files.

• Step 3. Select all the files you want to recover and click “Recover”. Then choose a different safe location to save these files.

2. Create a New Partition to Make the Hard Drive Detectable

Once you have recovered all your important files, you can proceed to create a new partition. This will make your hard drive detectable and usable on your computer again.

• Step 1. Right-click “This PC,” select “Manage,” and then click “Disk Management.”
• Step 2. Right-click on the unallocated space on your hard drive and select “New Simple Volume…”.
• Step 3. In the New Simple Volume Wizard, select “Next” to continue.
• Step 4. Set the volume size, assign a drive letter to the volume, set NTFS as the file system, and then click “Next.”

• Step 5. Click “Finish” when Disk Management shows that a new volume has been created on your hard drive.

Solution 4. Change Hard Drive Letter – Fix Disk Not Showing with Drive Letter Conflict

This solution helps fix hard drive not showing up in File Explorer caused by conflicting drive letter or no drive letter of the hard drive.

When your hard drive’s drive letter conflicts with another drive letter on the computer, the hard drive will appear as a New Volume in Disk Management. As a result, it does not appear in File Explorer.

Therefore, the best way to make your hard drive appear is to change the drive letter. Here are the steps to do this:

• Step 1. In Disk Management, right-click the hard drive that is marked as New Volume or does not have a drive letter for the partition.
• Step 2. Select “Change Drive Letter and Path.” Click “Change” in the new window.
• Step 3. Assign a new drive letter to your external or internal hard drive and click “OK.”

Solution 5. Update Disk Drives – Fix Hard Drive Not Appearing Due to Old Disk Drive

This solution fixes the issue of fixing hard drive not showing up in File Explorer and hard drive having a yellow exclamation mark in Disk Management.

If your hard drive has a yellow exclamation mark under the Disk Drive section in Disk Management, this means that the drive driver is out of date. As a result, the hard drive will not appear in Windows File Explorer or Disk Management.

The only solution is to update the device driver and here are the steps to do that:

• Step 1. Right-click “This PC” and select “Manage”.
• Step 2. Click “Device Manager” and then expand “Disk drives”.
• Step 3. Locate and right-click the problematic external or internal drive and select “Update driver.”
• Step 4. Click “Search automatically for driver software online”.

Solution 6. Initializing, Creating Volume and Enabling Disk in BIOS – Fix New Hard Drive Not Appearing

Most of the time, if your hard drive is a brand new disk, you’ll need to initialize it first. Then create a new partition on it and enable it in BIOS. By doing this, you will make your new hard drive appear in Windows 10/8/7.

1. Initialize Disk and Create Volume on New Hard Drive

• Step 1. Right-click “This PC” (in Windows 10) and select “Manage.”
• Step 2. Go to “Disk Management,” right-click on your new hard drive and select “Initialize Disk.”
• Step 3. Select the disk, choose MBR or GPT as the partition style, and click “OK” to get started.

• Step 4. Right-click on the unallocated space on your new hard drive and select “New Simple Volume…”.
• Step 5. Set the volume size, drive letter, and file system for the new hard drive to NTFS.
• Step 6. Click “Finish” when the process is complete.

2. Enable Hard Drive in BIOS

If the hard drive is disabled in BIOS, the operating system cannot detect it, causing it not to appear in Windows. Therefore, it is necessary to check whether your hard drive is disabled in BIOS.

• Step 1. Restart your computer and press F2 or Del until you enter the BIOS.
• Step 2. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to select “Integrated Peripherals” and press “Enter.”

• Step 3. Use the arrow keys to select “USB Controller”.
  • If it is disabled, change the option to “Enabled”.

• Step 4. Save and exit BIOS.

Then restart your computer and check if your hard drive is detected.

Part 2. Fixing External Hard Drive Not Appearing Problem – 4 Solutions

This part fixes the error where external hard drive is not visible or not detected by Windows PC.

Mostly, when your external hard drive does not show up in Windows 10/8/7, firstly, connect your new hard drive to your computers properly.

Then you can choose a suitable solution that will make your external hard drive appear and work normally on your PC:

• Solution 1. Replace USB Cable/USB Port and Reconnect External Hard Drive
• Solution 2. Format External Hard Drive as NTFS/exFAT
• Solution 3. Reinstall External Hard Drive Disk Drive
• Solution 4. Update Universal BUS Controller Drivers

So, the solutions are pretty obvious now. Follow the correct method to make your new hard drive detectable and appear on your computer again.

Solution 1. Replace USB Cable, USB Port and Reconnect External Hard Drive

Change the connection between the external hard drive and the computer and you can make the external disk appear.

• Step 1. If the old one is corrupted, replace it with a new USB cable and connect the drive to the PC.
• Step 2. If the external hard drive does not appear, change the USB port and reconnect the drive to the PC.
• Step 3. Connect the external hard drive to another computer.

If nothing appears, your external hard drive has a detection issue on your PC. Try the 3 solutions below to make the drive appear again.

Solution 2. Format External Hard Drive as NTFS/exFAT

If the external hard drive appears as RAW or “*Other”, it will not appear correctly on your computer.

• Step 1. Keep the external hard drive connected to the PC.
• Step 2. Open Disk Management and right-click on the external hard drive that has the RAW or unknown file system.
• Step 3. Select “Format” and set “NTFS” or “exFAT” for the external hard drive.
• Step 4. Select “OK” to complete the formatting.

Solution 3. Reinstall Disk Drives – Fix External Hard Drive Not Appearing with Yellow Exclamation in Disk Management

If the external hard drive is not visible and there is a yellow exclamation mark in Disk Management, follow this solution.

When there is an old drive on the external hard drive, it does not show up in File Explorer. It appears with a yellow exclamation mark in the disk drive section.

The only solution is to update the device driver and to do that, follow these steps:

• Step 1. Right-click the Windows icon and select “Device Manager”.
• Step 2. Expand “Disk drives” and find your external hard drive.
• Step 3. Right-click the problematic external drive and select “Remove device.”
• Step 4. Click “OK” to confirm. Restart your computer and reconnect the external hard drive to your PC.

Solution 4. Update Old BUS Controller Drivers on External Hard Drive

This solution applies if the external hard drive is not visible or detected by the Windows PC.

If you find that the external hard drive works with one computer but is not detected by another computer, you can try updating the USB Controller driver of the computer where the drive does not appear.

• Step 1. Right-click “This PC” and select “Manage”.
• Step 2. Click “Device Manager” and expand “Universal Serial Bus controllers”.
• Step 3. Right-click “USB Root Hub (USB3.0)” and select “Update driver”.
• Step 4. Select “Automatically update driver software” and restart your computer.

Part 3. Bonus Tips to Fix Hard Drive Not Showing Files

Sometimes, a hard drive may not show files, but the files are present. Note that files missing from the hard drive are still recoverable. Let us note that the loss of files may be due to the following reasons:

• Files are hidden by malware or virus
• Files were accidentally deleted
• The computer does not recognize the hard drive’s file system

To solve these problems, you can follow the steps below:

Step 1. Recover hidden or removed files from hard drive.

Reliable EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard can help you restore all your hard drive files in just 3 steps as shown in Fix 3 Part 1.

Step 2. Run antivirus or malware removal software to remove all viruses and malware.

Step 3. Format the hard disk to restore its full capacity and set the file system to NTFS.

Now you can use this drive and save files on it again. For more details, check out the article on flash drive not showing files.

Conclusion Section

In this guide, we have explained to you why your hard drive or external hard drive is not visible on your Windows PC. We have also provided solutions and fixes to help make used external or internal hard drives and new hard drives visible again without losing any data.

Sometimes, you may encounter the same problem on a USB drive, SD card, etc. you can live. These fixes include USB, SD card, etc. can be applied to solve this error on devices.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hard Drive Not Appearing

In addition to new or used hard drives not showing up in File Explorer or Disk Management issues, we will try to answer your most frequently asked questions about these topics.

If you have any questions, the following might be the answer you’re looking for:

1. What should I do if my internal hard drive is not detected?

As mentioned on this page, there are many ways you can follow to fix the internal hard drive not detected issue.

For a new hard drive, initialize the disk and then create partitions on the drive.

For a used hard drive, try these tips shown in Part 1 on this page:

• Change the hard drive letter;
• Recover lost partition data and create new partitions;
• Update the hard drive driver;
• Check hard drive connection and enable in BIOS.

2. How does Windows 10 recognize a new hard drive?

Similar to the solutions provided on this page, if a new hard drive is not detected or recognized in Windows 10, you should follow these tips:

Check the new hard drive connection > Initialize the new hard drive and create partition > Update the drive letter > Enable in BIOS.

3. Why doesn’t my hard drive show up on Mac?

Just like the hard drive not showing up on Windows computers, the reasons why your hard drive is not showing up on a Mac are quite similar.

Here is a list of reasons why a hard drive does not appear on Mac:

• Hard drive connection error
• Desktop, Finder settings
• USB port problem
• Hard drive is corrupted
• macOS and firmware are out of date

For a step-by-step guide, you can follow the guide on USB flash drive not showing up on Mac to fix hard drive not detected issue on Mac and make the drive detectable again.