Windows 10: Why is my hard drive showing a question mark?

Yo, My hard drive is showing a question mark in file explorer and i cant open it. It is also not showing up on the disk management I also ensured the hard drive was firmly plugged into my pc. If someone could help I would greatly appreciate it.

:)

 

Blue question mark over my hard drive?

Is the device ‘seen’ under disk management?

Is the device ‘seen’ under My Computer?

Does the hard drive have a letter assigned?

I’ve found this here
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/for... which fixed the same problem for the user but in their case their hard drive was hidden:

[Start] [Run] [Regedit]

Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment

Data Type: REG_SZ [String Value] // Value Name: DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES

Modify/Create the Value Name [DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES] according to the Value Data listed below.

Value Data: [1 = Show Devices / 0 = Hide Devices]

 

Hard Drive not Showing

Hi Lori,

Thank you for posting back.

• How are you connecting the Hard drive to your computer?
• Have you tried connecting the hard drive to a different computer and check if it works?

It's possible that your USB drivers are corrupt. I suggest you to try the following steps and check.

• Press Windows Key +R and type
  devmgmt.msc to open Device manager.
• Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers
  at the left bottom.
• Right-click the first USB controller under Universal Serial Bus controllers, and then click on
  Uninstall to remove it.
• Repeat these steps for the entire USB controller under Universal Serial Bus controllers.
• Restart the computer. After the computer starts, Windows will automatically scan for hardware changes and reinstall all the USB controllers that you uninstalled.

Keep us posted with the status of the issue to assist you further.

Thank you.

 

How to Partiton a Hard Drive in Vista

This is a way to get Vista to see another hard drive that is not associated with the OS. There is some times when your new hdd doesn't seem to want to work well with Vista. But, there is a solution in it.

Open the Computer Management By doing these steps.

• Click on the Start Button
• Click on Control Panel
• Click Administrative Tools
• Double click on Computer Management

You are now in the Navigation panel of the Computer Management.
When in Computer Management, you then have to allow the new drive to be recognized.

• Double click on Storage
• Double click on Disk Management

Now in the middle of your screen there is the layout of the Disk Drives that you have. The drives that are partitioned will show by the drive lettering. The others will just show up as having nothing at all in them. Below that there will be the Disk drives that are installed into the computer. You'll see that the primary one will all ways read as "Disk 0". Then you will have Disk 1 and so on. Under the Disks there will also see your CD-Rom drives.. If there is more then one, it will be labeled the same as Disk drives..

On to the Partitioning of the drive in question.

• Right Click on the drive
• Click to format the drive or Enable Volume. There will be a series of windows that open up. This is Vista's formatting. Just go threw the windows, and make sure everything is the way you want it to happen.
• Once the formatting is done, will take some time depending on the drive size.
• Right click on the drive
• Click on Mark the Partition as Active

After you have done those steps, The drive will be up and running threw Vista.



:Side Notes:
If you are not the Administer to the Os, then you will have to enable it..
You may also want to redo the drive lettering of it all. But, I really don't see a reason to do so. If you do, you have to redo drive paths and so forth.. A lot of work on something so small...