When you connect a new external hard drive to your computer straight out of the box, you may not see it in the list of available drives. Most likely, this is because the drive does not have any partitions.

While it may seem like a mountain to climb, it is straightforward to fix. If your computer doesn't recognize the hard drive you're trying to connect for the first time; we will show you how to fix it.

Why Windows Does Not Detect the External Drive

Although you may be able to connect the external drive to the computer and see it in disk management, the drive space might remain unallocated. Unallocated drive space refers to space on the drive that might be free but does not belong to a partition. Therefore, the computer can't write data there.

As the operating system can't access that space, it shows no usable drives when used for backup or storage. Let's see how you can get it working.

How to Make the Drive Partition Usable

It's super easy to make a drive's partition usable in Windows. You can do this by right-clicking the Windows Start button and going to Disk Management. After that, you will see the external drive attached to your computer, but all its space will appear to be unallocated.

Disk Management Showing Unallocated Drive Space of Newly Connected Drive

Right-click on the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume...

Making the Unallocated Drive Space Usable in Windows

After that, keep pressing Next in all the popups in the wizard, and finally click Finish. Afterward, wait for Windows to finish formatting the drive, and it will be ready to use.

Make the External Drive Space Useable in Windows

Hopefully, you have managed to make the external drive usable by now. The unallocated space only needs to be enabled once the external drive is connected for the first time to your computer. After that, the problem shouldn't occur again.

You should fix other issues if you experience the same problem later or if your external drive, which you've previously used with no problems, stops working suddenly.