Hard Drive not Showing in Windows 8, 8.1 [Fix]

If you tried upgrading to the new Windows 8 operating system from an older version of Windows at the end of the installation you might have some issues do to the fact that the second hard drive or even the hard drive where the Windows 8 was installed might not appear in your explorer. This is a common issue that many users are struggling with but don’t be alarmed because we can do a very quick fix on this that will take you only 10 minutes of your time.

The Windows 8 operating system you have installed might not recognize the hard drive for several reasons due to installation errors received from the hard disk but there is a feature inside Windows 8 that you can access and set up your hard drive back to normal in no time. By following the tutorial posted below you can make your hard drive appear in your explorer window as you had it in the previous version of Windows you were using.

Tutorial for making your hard drive show in Windows 8

For us to show again your secondary hard drive or the hard drive you have installed Windows 8 in file explorer we will need to access the control panel feature present in Windows 8.

1. Hover the mouse over the right side of the screen.
2. Click(left click) on the “Settings” icon you have in the menu there.
3. After clicking on “Settings” you will have to look in there for “Control Panel”
4. Click(left click) on “Control Panel”
5. You are presented in the Control panel window with a search box, we need to type in the search box the following sentence: “Disk Management”.
6. In the Disk Management topic look for “Administrative tools”.
7. Under “Administrative tools” topic you should be presented with a button that says “Create and Format hard disk portions”, click(left click) on it.
8. You should look in there for the disk that is not showing up in your explorer (it should have a yellow icon next to it that has an exclamation mark).
9. Click(right click) on the hard disk you are having trouble detecting and choose the feature “Import Foreign disk”
10. After you did all these steps you will need to reboot the Windows 8 PC or laptop and try to open file explorer again. Now should show you the missing hard drive and everything will be back to normal.
    Note: This tutorial does not fix any hardware malfunctions you can have with your hard drive. If it is a hardware malfunction I recommend going directly to a specialized store or perhaps the electronics store you bought the PC from and try replacing the hard drive.

So you have above the very easy way to fix your hard drive if it doesn’t show up in your Windows 8 operating system. You can leave us a comment below and tell us if this article was in any way useful for you and what we could do to improve it.