Feb202011

Why does Windows 7 not recognize my new hard drive?

W. Brown asks:

I am running Windows 7. I am replacing a hard drive in an external dock and Windows will not recognize the new hard drive. I can put the old one back in and it is fine. Both drives are of the same manufacturer. Any thoughts?



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  • Anonymous February 21, 2011

    Open ‘Administration Tools’, select ‘Computer Management’, click on ‘Disk Management’ and see if it can be seen here. If it does show here, chances are it doesn’t have a drive letter assigned. If this is the case, right click on the drive, select “Change drive Letter…’, and assign a drive letter to it.

    or

    1. Go to run and enter [diskmgmt.msc] and hit [enter] to open the Disk Management interface in Windows 7.

    2. Now You can see all the hard drives and partitions of the computer system.

    3. Select the partition which don,t have the Drive Letter.

    4. Right Click on that Drive and Select “Change Drive Letter and Paths”

    5. Now click the Add button and assign a drive letter to the partition.

    or

    1.Plug in and turn on the external USB hard drive
    2.Right mouse click on My Computer
    3.Left click on Manage
    4.Left click on Device Manager
    5.Expand the USB list
    6.Find the USB device for your USB Hard Drive (in my case it was the one that had no description)
    7.Right mouse click – Uninstall
    8.Turn off the external USB hard drive
    9.Turn on the external USB hard drive and let it find and install the driver
    10.It should work

    ——————————————————————————–

    • Bambi March 8, 2012

      Thank you a million times. That was very helpful.

  • FIDELIS February 21, 2011

    Hello do you get any error when trying to access the drive? I would also check on the device manager to see what the status of the drive is first.

    – Start Button
    – type Device Manager in the Search bar
    – press enter
    – double click to expand the Disk drives heading on device manager
    – right click the external hard drive and click Properties
    – check if there is any error message showing

    You could try this too:
    – Start
    – type Disk Management in to the Search box
    – press enter
    – on toolbar, click on Action
    – select rescan disks

    Is the drive formatted?

  • Balosatom February 22, 2011

    Is the new drive is dynamic disk? Or it is not formatted?

  • Tina February 28, 2011

    W. Brown,

    were you able to fix hard drive recognition following the advice given above? Your feedback is most valuable! Also, if your problem persists I can add it to a list of Toughest Questions to be published on the blog this Tuesday. Just let us know! Thank you!

    • W. Brown February 28, 2011

      Referring to my question about Windows 7 not recognizing my external hard drive., The answers received settled out my problem and I am back in business. Thank you so much for all your effort and that of the responders.
      W. Brown

      • Tina February 28, 2011

        Thank you for the feedback! :)

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