Missing drive

NRD

Active member
Hi guy's,
I have just fitted an external hard drive," in Devices " it would appear to have been configured okay. However, when looking in " C " expecting to see it listed as drive E for instance it does not show, only drive C and DVD are shown.
What am I doing or more to the point not doing here to get this drive recognised???????
 

steaky360

Moderator
Moderator
Is it USB? It should appear in 'removable devices' similar to how a USB memory stick appears.

Try unplugging it and plugging it back in.

If it doesn't appear straight away, see if you can hear/feel the drive spinning, if its not then something is up.

Try a different USB port etc. (I'm assuming its USB)
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
It's probably not formatted or not formatted with NTFS, it may be formatted for Linux for example in which case Windows won't recognise it.

Open Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management and click the Disk Management menu entry. Your USB disk should show up there, if you right click on it you should be able to format it, you can also assign a drive letter from there too.
 

XplosiV

Bronze Level Poster
It might just need to be made "active" you can check by following ubuysa's instructions to check in the disk management utility
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
It might just need to be made "active" you can check by following ubuysa's instructions to check in the disk management utility

Only one partition/drive should be active - the bootable partition/drive and that's normally C:. Making a partition/drive active when it doesn't contain boot files may render the PC unbootable.
 

NRD

Active member
Here I am again,
answers to above: yes it is USB. It appears to be formatted NTFS, I can hear what appears to be the disc spinning okay by the sound, and in Disc Management it is listed as unallocated if any of this is any more helpful to you all. I have checked the latter and it certainly is the disc that I am referring to.
 

steaky360

Moderator
Moderator
If disk management is saying its unallocated, I think formatting it will sort it for you. You can do that through disk management.
 

daveeb

Enthusiast
Sounds like it may need to be initialised (i think that is still an option these days), like Steaky says in disk management (you said it's already formatted NTFS).
 

NRD

Active member
To UBUYSA.......
Guess what I now have a Drive E: Showing, thanks to your last post I eventually found out how to assign a drive letter in Disc Management. The system is now all go again and I now have extra space to save all my goodies again.
Many thanks again to all of you that tried to help this old Very-silver surfer.......
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
To UBUYSA.......
Guess what I now have a Drive E: Showing, thanks to your last post I eventually found out how to assign a drive letter in Disc Management. The system is now all go again and I now have extra space to save all my goodies again.
Many thanks again to all of you that tried to help this old Very-silver surfer.......

Happy to help, glad it's sorted. :)
 
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