KB Issue

A newly installed and formatted hard drive does not show in My Computer but shows in Disk Management.

Issue Details

When installing and formatting a new hard drive through a USB-connected device, you may see the device in [Disk Management], but not see it in [My Computer] (or) [This PC].

Several issues can cause this problem; the ones listed below are the ones we have encountered.

Recreate Issue

The drive letter is not properly assigned to the USB hard drive, so Windows does not recognize it in [This PC] or [My Computer].

Resolve Issue

After initializing the drive and creating a new volume is completed, a format is performed, then a letter is assigned to the drive. In some cases, this drive letter could be wrong.

Example

USB Drive Information
Volume M: (\Device\HarddiskVolume32) is healthy. No action is needed.
Volume N: (\Device\HarddiskVolume33) is healthy. No action is needed.

In the two examples above, these are the same drives. However, you can tell they have different drive letters. The first one is M, and the second one is N.

[N] is the proper letter for the drive, but [M] shows in Disk Management.

Since the drive letter was not correctly assigned to the drive, it is sending the wrong information to Windows, causing Windows not to recognize it on [This PC].

We need to Shut off the USB device and then turn it back on to fix this issue.
Turning off the USB device will cause the drive to resync itself with [Windows], and the drive letter will then be appropriately assigned and recognized by [This PC] or [My Computer].