HDD not showing up in explorer

My father gave me an old 160GB HDD (it is SATA based, FYI) he had laying around because I told him that's perfect for my music library. I just put it in, but Windows explorer isn't showing it although I swore I saw a new registry in the BIOS after plugging it in. What do I need to do to trouble shoot this? I've had drives not want to work, deny access, or act corrupted, but I've never had a drive simply not show up. Is it possible the drive is simply dead? Yes, but unlikely. It worked the last time the computer it was in was used.

Try looking in disk manager (computer management in control panel > administrative tools)
most likely no partition, or letter assigned. (if letter was not assigned then it won't show up in explorer)

Will do, didn't know that. I can confirm that the BIOS knows the drive it's there. I just checked.

Hmm, what exactly do I need to do? Can you post a screenshot of the specific window you're meaning so I can be sure I have the right one?

from there you can see if there's unallocated, or if it doesn't have letter assigned to it.

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Ah, as I suspected I was in the wrong part of the control panel.

I found your window now (yikes, it's been nearly 3 years since I've worked with partitions other than when I do an OS install). This drive has partitions (my father warned me stuff might still be on it) but it does seem to not have a letter as you suspected. From here I can easily run the manager and get it working, but it's like to recover any files on it first. How do I assign a letter without messing with the partitions?


basically change drive letter. (nothing to fear)

It's saying it has 100% free space btw. Is that's not software being buggy, it means I can just wipe the drive and start over.

Ah, see those options are greyed out for me :(

nah this software is not buggy. Its heavily integrated with windows partitions. post SS

Actually this isn't even showing a file system type (no NTFS or anything). Imma just format it and go from there.

ok cool if thats the case.

Tada! It's working. Thanks for the info, I didn't know about drives not being assigned a letter. Something new everyday.