Question My HDD doesn't appear in My Computer. Only in Disk Management. Need some help.

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jayhayjay

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Nov 18, 2015
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Hey everyone. I'm having an issue with one of my HDDs.

My secondary HDD doesn't show up in My Computer. It only shows up in Disk Management but only at the bottom and it appears as "not initialized" and "unallocated".

This has happened a couple of times before as well but I fixed it by simply unplugging and re-plugging the SATA and PSU cables. It didn't work this time though.

It's a 1 TB WD Caviar Black that I've had for a few years.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
 
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Ralston18 said:
Is all data on that drive backed up, proven recoverable, and readable?

Anything you do could cause data loss.

Try other known working SATA and PSU cables to the WD Caviar Black drive.

Are you able to run WD's diagnostic tools on the drive?

FYI:

https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/6226

https://www.lifewire.com/western-digital-data-lifeguard-diagnostic-review-2624564
Click to expand...
Thanks for the response.

No, unfortunately, I haven't backed up anything. I've now tried with a different PSU and SATA cable and the problem persists. WD's diagnostic tool cannot actually find the disk either. Like I said, it only appears in the Disk Management box.
 
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Ralston18 said:
Let's go back a couple of steps:

Do you see any drive related errors codes, warning, etc. in Reliability History and/or Event Viewer?
Click to expand...
I don't see anything in R. History but I have found 4 disk errors in Event Viewer from 5 days ago and they all say the same thing "device harddisk1/DR1 is not ready for use". There's also one "Device/Ide/IdePort2" error. I have no idea what they mean but maybe they'll be helpful for you.
 
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Could be that the drive has indeed failed.

You can try installing it in another known working system just as secondary drive to determine if the drive can be found.

You can also use Powershell to "look for" the drive.

Actually via "Get" cmdlets.

Reference:

https://www.action1.com/kb/getting-PC-hard-drive-information-using-Powershell.html

The objective is to discover what "Windows" is seeing (or not seeing) with repect to the drive(s).

Use only "Get-" cmdlets .

From the above link:

  • Get-PhysicalDisk allows you to get information about physical disks, device characteristics.
  • Get-Disk display disk information at the logical level of the operating system.
  • Get-Partition show partition information on all drives.
  • Get-Volume display volume information on all disks.
Compare the results to what you know and or expect with regards to the installed drives.

As always be sure that all data is backed up.
 
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Ralston18 said:
Could be that the drive has indeed failed.

You can try installing it in another known working system just as secondary drive to determine if the drive can be found.

You can also use Powershell to "look for" the drive.

Actually via "Get" cmdlets.

Reference:

https://www.action1.com/kb/getting-PC-hard-drive-information-using-Powershell.html

The objective is to discover what "Windows" is seeing (or not seeing) with repect to the drive(s).

Use only "Get-" cmdlets .

From the above link:

  • Get-PhysicalDisk allows you to get information about physical disks, device characteristics.
  • Get-Disk display disk information at the logical level of the operating system.
  • Get-Partition show partition information on all drives.
  • Get-Volume display volume information on all disks.
Compare the results to what you know and or expect with regards to the installed drives.

As always be sure that all data is backed up.
Click to expand...
Yea, I plugged the disk in my brother's computer and it wasn't recognised by the system. I assume that's not good news.

Also, I don't find PowerShell easy to use but, like it suggests on the site you linked, I've actually tried the -diskpart command in cmd and it didn't show the disk.
 
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Unfortunately that is, indeed, "not good news".

And no problem that Powershell is not easy to use per se. Like many other things, you will find it easier with more use.

My immediate suggestion is to try the drive on another computer or two, try running the Powershell cmdlets again, and determining if there are any signs of "life" remaining in the drive. Be sure you are running Powershell with Admin rights.

One last attempt to salvage the drive and/or recover data.

In the meantime, someone else may offer other ideas and suggestions.
 
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Ralston18 said:
Unfortunately that is, indeed, "not good news".

And no problem that Powershell is not easy to use per se. Like many other things, you will find it easier with more use.

My immediate suggestion is to try the drive on another computer or two, try running the Powershell cmdlets again, and determining if there are any signs of "life" remaining in the drive. Be sure you are running Powershell with Admin rights.

One last attempt to salvage the drive and/or recover data.

In the meantime, someone else may offer other ideas and suggestions.
Click to expand...
I actually just tried the commands you mentioned on PowerShell but none of them works. When I type Get-PhysicalDisk, for instance, it says "this term is not recognised as the name of a cmdlet...".
 
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Ralston18 said:
Are you running Powershell with admin rights?

Do you have the PS> prompt?

At the PS> did you first run

Get-Command -Module Storage

per my reference link in Post #6
Click to expand...
1.png

This is what I see
 
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Try the following launch:

In "Type here to search", type Powershell Actually start typing Powershell and wait/watch for the Powershell window to open.

In the Pop up Window, right side, select "Run as Administrator"

[You do have admin rights - correct?]

A shield should appear in the Task bar, click the blue/gold shield and then select "Yes".

That should take you to Powershell via PS C:\WINDOWS\system32>
 
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Ralston18 said:
Try the following launch:

In "Type here to search", type Powershell Actually start typing Powershell and wait/watch for the Powershell window to open.

In the Pop up Window, right side, select "Run as Administrator"

[You do have admin rights - correct?]

A shield should appear in the Task bar, click the blue/gold shield and then select "Yes".

That should take you to Powershell via PS C:\WINDOWS\system32>
Click to expand...
My apologies for not replying earlier. I was kinda busy these days and forgot about our conversation. Sorry!

I've managed to run PowerShell as administrator and got it to work from the C:\WINDOWS\system32 directory but I'm still getting the same error, unfortunately.

I shall also point out that I'm using Windows 7, if that makes any difference. Pardon me, I should have pointed it out from the beginning.

pshell.png
 
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One thought is to upgrade Powershell.

However likely overall safer and simpler to just use diskpart to learn more about the drives.

https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/diskpart-windows-how-to-use/

All that is necessary is to apply list

DISKPART> list

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.610

DISK - Display a list of disks. For example, LIST DISK.
PARTITION - Display a list of partitions on the selected disk.
For example, LIST PARTITION.
VOLUME - Display a list of volumes. For example, LIST VOLUME.
VDISK - Displays a list of virtual disks.

The objective being to learn more about (if possible) that second HDD.
 
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Ralston18 said:
One thought is to upgrade Powershell.

However likely overall safer and simpler to just use diskpart to learn more about the drives.

https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/diskpart-windows-how-to-use/

All that is necessary is to apply list

DISKPART> list

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.610

DISK - Display a list of disks. For example, LIST DISK.
PARTITION - Display a list of partitions on the selected disk.
For example, LIST PARTITION.
VOLUME - Display a list of volumes. For example, LIST VOLUME.
VDISK - Displays a list of virtual disks.

The objective being to learn more about (if possible) that second HDD.
Click to expand...
I'm providing you with two photos.

Everything's in Greek but I'll translate what's necessary. And I'm sure you can understand a few things nevertheless.

Here are the disks listed. The second disk, which has the problem, appears as "Disk 1" with 465 GBs. But it only appears here:
list-disk.png


Here is this disk's partition listed:
list-partition.png


^^This translates to "There are no disk partitions to be displayed".

Any ideas?
 
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Hi there.

I have two HDDs and my second one doesn't appear in My Computer. It only shows up in Disk Management but only at the bottom and it appears as "not initialized" and "unallocated".

Things I've tried that were recommended to me by a fella from the forums:

- Using different SATA cables and SATA ports on my motherboard.

- Checking in Reliability History and Event Viewer. I didn't see anything in R. History but I found 4 disk errors in Event Viewer a few days ago and they all said the same thing, "device harddisk1/DR1 is not ready for use". There's also one "Device/Ide/IdePort2" error. I have no idea what they mean but maybe they'll be helpful for you.

- Using PowerShell to see if there are any errors. Here are the commands I tried without success:

pshell.png


screen.png


sdsadasd.png


list-disk.png
list-partition.png


Disk is listed as "Disk 1" in the image on the left. And in the image on the right, below 'list partition' it says in Greek "There are no disk partitions to be displayed".

Any input? Thanks!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
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As stated by my colleague above, I'm somewhat sure that the HDD is dead or you're going to have to reinitialize the disk and recreate any and/or all partitions in order to get it working. If the drive is behaving the same way on a donor system, then the issue is with the drive, not the system's.
 
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Lutfij said:
As stated by my colleague above, I'm somewhat sure that the HDD is dead or you're going to have to reinitialize the disk and recreate any and/or all partitions in order to get it working. If the drive is behaving the same way on a donor system, then the issue is with the drive, not the system's.
Click to expand...
So, basically, it'd only make sense to format it, right? Is there a way I can recover some of the files?
 
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If there ist no partitions that can be displayed, that might be because those partitions are not NTFS or FAT32, If you're using Windows, so maybe you could check that again using Linux from a USB Stick and gparted. I would recommend that. If there is a Partition that can not be recognized blocking the way to the rest, your chance of creating a Backup are a bit Better with Linux, i assume.
 
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