Fixes for Second Hard Drive Not Showing Up in Windows 10

Secondary hard drives are an excellent way for you to extend the storage capacity of your PC without having to replace your primary hard drive. When a computer doesn't recognize a secondary hard drive or the second hard drive is not showing up correctly, you must identify the root of the problem and find corresponding solutions.

How to Fix Second Hard Drive Not Showing Up in Windows 10/8/7

Now, here are the four types of second hard drive not showing up issues in Windows 10, 8.1, 8, and 7. Examine your case and pick up one solution that works best for you:

If you run into one of these troubles, you are in the right place! On this page. we present troubleshooting steps in detail to help address each issue perfectly, by which you'll be able to make use of your second or even third HDD or SSD without the recognition problem.

Fix Second Hard Drive Not Showing Up in This PC or My Computer

According to the received feedback, over half of users didn't see their external hard drive appearing in the place where it should be, i.e This PC in Windows 10 and 8, My Computer in Windows 7. You can check it in the Disk Management, which is probably shown as a disk 1 or disk 2 with "Unallocated". Or do it in an easier way.

Download a third-party free partition manager called EaseUS Partition Master. It can quickly troubleshoot the problem by assigning a drive letter.

 

Step 1: Launch EaseUS Partition Master

On the main window, right-click on the unallocated space on your hard drive or external storage device and select "Create".

Step 2: Adjust the new partition size, file system, label, etc.

Set the size, partition label, drive letter, file system, etc. for the new partition and click "OK" to continue.

Step 3: Confirm to create a new partition

Click on the "Execute Operation" button and confirm to create a new partition by clicking "Apply".

Close the program when the job is done. Now return to This PC or My Computer, your hard drive should be detected by Windows and correctly displayed with the drive letter you've just created!

Fix Second Hard Drive Not Showing Up in Disk Management

You should move further to the Device Manager and it's time to update hard drive drivers. 

Step 1. Select the "Start" button, type Device Manager, and select it from the list of results.

Step 2. Expand one of the categories to find the name of your device, then right-click (or tap and hold) it, and select "Update Driver". 

Step 3. Select "Search automatically for updated driver software".

• If Windows doesn't find a new driver, you can try to look for one on the device manufacturer's website and follow their instructions.
• Otherwise, try reinstalling the driver by doing like this: Open "Device Manager", right-click the name of the device, and select "Uninstall". Restart your PC and Windows will attempt to reinstall the driver.

How to Fix the Second HDD not Showing Up in Device Manager

That's a little troublesome when your hard drive is not even detected in Windows Device Manager, and you should pray a little while because your drive is probably corrupted and develops bad sectors. In this case, you can either use the aforementioned EaseUS Partition Master to repair hard disk bad sectors or run Windows Hardware and Devices Troubleshooter.

Step 1: Navigate to "Control Panel" and click on "Troubleshooting".

Step 2: On the right pane, find "Hardware and Sound", under which select "Configure a device".

Step 3: Run as administrator is asked. Click "Next" to run Troubleshooter. 

Step 4: If any issues are found you will be prompted to confirm "Apply this fix". This may occur numerous times depending on the errors found.

How to Fix Second Hard Drive Not Showing Up in BIOS

Have you prepared for the worst situation that this second hard drive shows up nowhere, including all the paths you can think of and even in BIOS? This problem should be tricky. You will need to ask a professional to help. As far as we concerned, your hard drive not showing up in BIOS is mainly caused because the drive is not enabled in the BIOS or it's just a faulty hard drive.

To enable hard drive in BIOS and make the second hard drive show up in Windows 10 correctly, do as follows.

Step 1. Restart PC. Hold and press "F2" to enter BIOS environment.

Step 2. In the Setup section, check whether the second hard drive is turned off in system setup. If yes, turn it on.

Step 3. Reboot PC again. See if the second hard drive showing up normal this time.

To make sure the connection is normal:

• Check whether the hard disk is connected correctly.
• Check whether the hard disk indicator is flashing normally.

Second Hard Drive Not Showing Up FAQs

Issues with unrecognized secondary hard drives are very common, and that's what we have been covering in the article above. If you still have a second drive not showing up problems, you can read the following frequently asked questions.

How do I get my computer to recognize a second hard drive?

To make a second hard drive recognized:

• Initialize the second hard drive
• Create a partition on the second HDD
• Update second hard drive drivers
• Use Windows troubleshooter.
• Turn on the second drive in BIOS
• Check the connections

Why is my second hard drive not showing?

Many reasons can lead to a missing hard drive:

• Uninitialized drive
• unallocated space
• Out-of-date device driver
• Connection problems and more

What do I do if my hard drive is not detected?

Steps on how to repair hard disk not detected:

1. Plug the hard drive into another USB port

2. Plug the hard drive into another computer

3. Uninstall the hard drive driver and then reassign the drive letter to the hard drive

Why should I use a secondary hard drive?

The main advantage of secondary hard drives is that while one that is faster, such as an SSD, can be used for computing purposes - games, resource-intensive apps, etc. the slow ones can be used purely for storing personal data.

Conclusion

So many effective methods can help you with the second hard drive not showing up problems. It is not challenging to deal with the second hard drive not detected in Windows 10/8/8.1/7 issue. More importantly, EaseUS Partition Master can also help solve other similar disk issues like BIOS detect the hard drive but Windows does not, USB flash drive showing 0 bytes or no media, HDD formatting takes forever, etc.