Why isn't my drive being detected in Windows?

Why isn't my drive being detected in Windows?

If you purchased a new computer and upon first boot up, you notice that one or more of your hard disk drives is not showing up, there is a small chance that it has lost its initialisation prior to shipping. This could either be within Windows itself, or a loose connection. 

If you add a brand new disk to your PC and it doesn't show up in File Explorer, you might need to add a drive letter or initialise it before using it. You can only initialise a drive that's not yet formatted. Initialising a disk erases everything on it and prepares it for use by Windows, after which you can format it and then store files on it.

To solve this, you will need to initialise the drives that are not showing up. Follow the instructions below which will guide you on how to initialise, partition and format your drive to make it usable.

To initialise new disks

Here's how to initialise a new disk using Disk Management.

1. Open Disk Management
To do so, right-click on the start menu button and click Disk Management.

2. Next you need to check if your Disk is initialised. It says not initialised then you should right click on the disk and click initialise. Keep all settings as default and click OK. The disk status briefly changes to Initialising and then to the Online status.

3. Next, you will see the partition is showing as Unallocated. This means we need to create a new volume and give it a drive letter and label. Just right-click on the Unallocated portion, and click create new Simple Volume. Leave all settings as default and click next.

4. Now you've done that, head over to File Explorer and you should see your drive appear.

If this doesn't work, and your drive still isn't detected. Please see the following guide on how to physically check your drive connections.