Windows 7 Troubleshooting Sandisk SSD Not Appearing in Windows After Ubuntu Installation

Venturadan said:

I have a Sandisk SSD that has Ubuntu loaded on it. I built a pc and loaded Windows 7 and both hard drives work. The SSD drive shows up in device manager and bios setup. Clicking on my computer the SSD drive does not show up. I look at the ssd using device manager and it gives me the option to disable or uninstall. I have uninstalled it and then when I restart it tells me the drive was successfully installed but still does not show up as a drive when I open the 'computer' icon. I am hoping to format it to get rid ubuntu and use it as a system drive. If I install just the ssd drive then the pc will boot into ubuntu.

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Windows won't recognize the filesystem types used by Linux, and won't display the volumes or provide access to the files. There isn't anything that will get Windows to display the existing Linux volumes in File Explorer. Instead, open a Command Prompt as administrator and input the following commands to clear the Linux filesystems entirely, and create a single new NTFS partition.

diskpart
list disk
select disk # (replace # with number of the SSD)
clean
create partition primary offset=8192
select partition 1
assign letter=H
format H: /FS:NTFS
exit

All files on the selected disk will be cleared. Ensure the correct disk number is selected. Use list partition after select disk # to ensure the correct disk number is selected, by looking for partitions that do not match what you expect is on the SSD.

The create partition primary has an offset, because Windows treats any partitions starting at the exact beginning of the disk like boot partitions, which are hidden by default.