Member Avatar for myth494

hey i've got the same problem but i cannot see any of my two hard drives in computer managment ): has anybody got ideas? thx

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Dani AI

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Good questions from . Start at the BIOS: if the drives do not show up there, Windows will never see them. Reseat the SATA/IDE data cables and power leads, try a different SATA port and cable, and make sure the port is enabled in BIOS. If they are older IDE/PATA drives, check the jumpers (Master/Slave/Cable Select) and use an 80‑wire cable. For 3.5 in. external or docked drives, confirm the separate power brick is working.

If the drives do appear in BIOS, go into Windows Device Manager first (Disk drives and Storage controllers) to rule out a missing/chipset or AHCI driver. Then open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) and choose Action -> Rescan Disks. If a disk shows as Unknown/Not Initialized or Offline, right‑click the disk label (left pane), Initialize (MBR for <=2 TB, GPT for larger), then create a New Simple Volume and assign a drive letter. Note on ’s point: only mark a partition Active if it is the system boot partition. Marking the wrong disk active can make the PC unbootable.

If you recently cloned a disk, Windows can offline the duplicate to avoid a signature collision. Bring it online either by right‑clicking the disk in Disk Management -> Online, or via DiskPart:

diskpart
list disk
select disk <n>
online disk
exit

Edge cases to check: Windows XP cannot use GPT or partitions beyond 2 TB; volumes will not appear. If nothing shows in Disk Management at all, look for disk errors in Event Viewer (System log), try the drives on another PC or USB dock, and run the vendor’s diagnostic to rule out drive failure.

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Member Avatar for GrimJack

Can you see them in BIOS?
What is your:
OS
rig
et c.
need some more details.

Member Avatar for Quackware

Make sure you go into drive management and mark the drive as active.

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