Home Storage Guides, Tricks and Tips

New Hard Drive Not Showing up in My Computer, How to do?

In order to increase internal storage, set up a RAID or save backup image files, many users want to or have already installed a second/new hard drive on computer. However, not few users have encountered a problem about not seeing the new disk in My Computer.

Tips: If you intend to install a new internal disk to save backup image file, you’d better not, because like the main hard disk, the second drive can also be attacked by malware, burglar, power surge or physical damage (eg. fire). So, replace it with an external one. 

What should I do if I can’t see my second disk in computer?

Partition and set up the disk! Right click “My Computer/Computer” either on the desktop or on the “Start Menu” and choose “Manage”. There comes up a new window named “Computer Management”. Select Storage in the left side and then “Disk Management” in the sub-category. Then, find the new hard drive and partition it. If you want only one partition on the disk, you’d better make it a primary one. Then, you should format the partition better in NIFS type. Use default allocation size and give a drive letter to it. Finally, the disk should be recognized. 


If you can’t see your new hard drive in My Computer, you can’t make use of it for sure. So, in order to get access to it, you may try the followings.

1. Go to Disk Management and find the disk that won’t mount (eg. Disk 3) which will listed as "Offline"

2. Right click on the blue "Offline" text and select "Online"

3. That’s it

Notes: 

* These instructions are applied to Windows 7, and should work with slight alternations in other versions.

* Nearly all hard drives you get from the retail stores need being partitioned and formatted before use. In addition, if you make two partitions, but format one of them, the other "part" of the hard drive will not show up in computer, or even if you format it but does not assign a drive letter, it won’t show up there either. 

* If the additional drive inserted into Windows 7 is a Dynamic Disk from an XP or W2K machine, Disk Manager (and Windows Explorer) will not see it, though it will show up in BIOS and in the Device Manager/Disk Drives. To use Dynamic drives from those OSs, you need to Right Click the Disk number in Disk Manager and click Import Foreign Disks.

You might instead download a program on the site of the hard drive manufacture or a third-party software to help to format and show the drive. And, run the program as administrator.

How to do if the new hard drive not shows up in Disk Management or BIOS?

If you cannot see your second drive in BIOS, you can’t see it in Disk Management for sure. The cause of the not seeing of the new disk is very similar in both BIOS and Disk Management. Restart your pc and make sure that everything is properly and well connected, such as data cable and power cable. If all is in well connection and the disk still can’t be seen, then you can take the disk out and put it in a disk enclosure to make it play as an external drive to have a try. Or, get your luck by installing the new disk in another pc. If it cannot be seen either, you may consider that your new drive may be damaged. However, you most probably still can get back the data on the drive if there’s any by having it repaired in professional disk repair shop. And, what lucky is that it is probably under warranty, so you may not need to pay for the repair.


Until here, nearly all the situations encountered by users have been listed. However, there are still some items users should bear in mind when new hard drive not showing up.

* If you don't know what to do - you never done this before or have little or no experience with computer hardware, you should never do any action mentioned above!

* You can do MUCH HARM if you try - i.e. you can trash your existing windows or other OS you have on your PC if you do something wrong to the BIOS!

* Get more help from a friend (make sure he/she knows, not just pretending to know!) what they are doing and have them show you what you should do in first place, when adding any hard drives!

* The best and safest solution is (in my opinion) is to get an external hard drive if you need to backup your existing data. External hard drive is in a case that is configured as such and should work when you plug it into the USB port.

* SATA has many available settings in the BIOS that will make your drive visible or not!

* Does the "new hard drive" have some other OS installed on it? This should be a question you must have the answer to before you do anything!


Sign In or Register to comment.