How to get windows to recognize second hard drive

fallenapples

In Runtime
Messages
386
Location
Toronto, Ontario
I reformatted my hard drive. When selecting partitions I deleted the second hard drive and it showed as unallocated space. I want it to show up as the E drive because I already installed my primary hdd as the C drive and I would like it as back up. The E drive does not show it in disk management How can I make Windows recognize it?
 
The question being why did you delete your E drive partitions when it wasn't necessary to do it outside of Windows? If it's not showing up in disk management something else is happening. I would try diskpart to see if it's listed as a disk there and if not see if it's still recognized in the bios.
 
Looks like a pretty old thread but, nonetheless....

If you wanted the data on it, you'll need to recover the partition. Some Linux tools are pretty good for this, you can run them on an Ubuntu (or other system) live drive without installing linux. You'll need a ~4-8GB flash drive you can erase to create one.

Alternatively, if you don't need the data then you'll need to create/format a partition and assign a drive letter. Hold windows key+R, enter diskmgmt.msc and hit enter to reach the Windows tool for this. Identify the drive, right click and create simple volume on the space. It will probably automatically assign a letter in this.

GPart can do a good job of the recovery:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=370121

Setting up a live drive:
Download Ubuntu
https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop?

Create the drive with Rufus
https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop?
 
There's an even better tool called TestDisk https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Saved my *** a ton of times, usually able to detect the formatted partition (assuming you just did a quick format not zero'd the drive out) and you'll have it back in under 5 mins as it just needs to rewrite/update the partition table.
 
There's an even better tool called TestDisk https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Saved my *** a ton of times, usually able to detect the formatted partition (assuming you just did a quick format not zero'd the drive out) and you'll have it back in under 5 mins as it just needs to rewrite/update the partition table.

Have also used TestDisk several times in the past to recover from a borked partition table.
 
Back
Top Bottom