New
#1
Missing Disk drive on new W10 installation
New PC, newly installed W10 (Version 1903, and installed by a professional, not by me) and two normal disks, an SSD with Windows on it and a standard hard disk, as well as a CD read/write drive. Only problem is that the hard disk cannot be accessed. For background, I have fairly limited computer knowledge and am new to W10
1. The inaccessible hard disk can be found in Control Panel – Device Manager – Disk Drives, which shows 2 disks, one of which is the hard disk ST200DM008 – 2FR102. In the Properties Events tab it is shown as configured and started, with the parent device PCI, and under Volumes it is a Basic disk, online, with GUID partition table & 1 907 713 Mb (16Mb reserved space)
It can also be found in System Information or using Disk Management: there however only the C disk (SSD) is shown in the top half of the window. The bottom half shows Disk 0, the SSD, with three partitions (OEM, EFI and Boot ... Primary) and Disk 1, the hard disk, with 1.863Gb described as unallocated.
2. But in W10's "This PC" only the C drive and the BD-Rom drive (E) are shown.
Power Shell => Get-Disk shows me two disks, both online and healthy, but with serial numbers that mean nothing to me. One is disk 1 and one is disk 0, and Disk 1 seems to have the “Friendly Name” of S and Disk 0 of W, but none of it really makes any sense to me (sorry to be so ignorant).
Equally DiskPart shows me only the (not in use) CD reader and the three partitions of the SSD C-disk.
3.Presumably I need to give the hard disk a letter or something - but how ? And how can I save files to it ?
Grateful for any advice for the simple-minded, Thanks, ardj.
Note A: In Disk Management the only options when I right click Disk 1 in the lower part of the window are Convert to Dynamic Disk and Convert to MBR Disk. Now presumably I need to do one of these, and while Dynamic Disks sound interesting, e.g. in terms of improving access times, my limited knowledge inclines me to favour MBR. But will doing this help ?
Note B: A similar query in this forum received the answer “Ah! Give it a letter then it'll show up in Explorer!” [Missing Hard drive after installing Win 10. However it does not go on to say how to do this.
Quote