Windows 10 Old HD won't show in Win10...

daden · Apr 21, 2021

Hello. I have an old hard drive that's not showing up in Win10. I've connected it to my laptop using a SATA to USB adapter, and it shows up in Disk Management, but not in Windows File Explorer. This HD has Windows Vista on it, but I'm just wanting to access the data/files. It was new in 2008.

Any help would be appreciated,
daden

GDany · Apr 22, 2021

I don't think that the adapter is the problem if you see the drive in DM. But what do you mean that the drive has no letter? The operating system assigns a letter to every usable physical drive and/or partition in order to enable user's access to drive by means of a file manager/explorer. Usually, only system partitions, recovery partitions or other kind of partitions that shouldn't be accessible to the user are not assigned a letter. So, if your drive has not a letter assigned to it, then you can not access it. As you said in your initial post, the old drive has an operating system installed on it. This means that, probably, your drive has more than one partition. In DM you should see your drive as it is divided in a few parts. The...

GDany · Apr 22, 2021

I've seen this behavior on my computer also. In Disk Management, right click on it and change its letter. It is probably using the same letter as an other drive. This, of course, if you are sure that your sata-to-usb adapter is working properly with your old drive.
I also have an old hdd from an old laptop which I can't see on my desktop when using a new sata adapter. But I can see it when I connect it to an AIO computer.

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daden · Apr 22, 2021

GDany said:
I've seen this behavior on my computer also. In Disk Management, right click on it and change its letter. It is probably using the same letter as an other drive. This, of course, if you are sure that your sata-to-usb adapter is working properly with your old drive.
I also have an old hdd from an old laptop which I can't see on my desktop when using a new sata adapter. But I can see it when I connect it to an AIO computer.

Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Thanks for the reply and info. Disk Management doesn't show that the old drive has a drive letter. I do have two drives in my laptop, but I can't find any letter with the old drive. I think the adapter is working, but not for sure. Is there any way I can confirm that the adapter is working? Like, maybe in Cmd prompt or PowerShell? [EDIT: I'm able to access all of the drive contents using my Chromebook, strangely enough. Thanks for your help.]

GDany · Apr 22, 2021

I don't think that the adapter is the problem if you see the drive in DM. But what do you mean that the drive has no letter? The operating system assigns a letter to every usable physical drive and/or partition in order to enable user's access to drive by means of a file manager/explorer. Usually, only system partitions, recovery partitions or other kind of partitions that shouldn't be accessible to the user are not assigned a letter. So, if your drive has not a letter assigned to it, then you can not access it. As you said in your initial post, the old drive has an operating system installed on it. This means that, probably, your drive has more than one partition. In DM you should see your drive as it is divided in a few parts. The largest part (partition) should be the one you are looking for and it probably had been assigned the letter C in your previous computer. You should right-click on this partition and from the pop-up menu that will show choose Change letter and then pick an unused letter from the list and click OK. After doing this, the drive will probably appear in Windows Explorer.

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Windows 10 Old HD won't show in Win10...

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