Computer Not Seeing Ssd

• Computer Not Seeing Ssd
• Ssd Not Showing Up In My Computer
• Computer Not Seeing New Ssd Drive
• Laptop Not Recognizing Ssd

Summary :

Page 1 of 2 - SSD not seen by laptop - posted in Internal Hardware: I have a Dell Inspirion 1545 where I am trying to upgrade the WD mechnical hard drive to Samsung EVO SSD. Sadly, I cannot get it. These problems could be divided into: new SSD is not showing up or recognized after connected to PC, recognition failure due to SSD driver and the poorer performance of SSD. And lacking of professional computer knowledge makes users feel hard to solve hard disk detection failure and system boot failure. Computer can not recognize the new purchased SSD which means this SSD is not showing in Computer or Disk manager. This could be caused by the lack of the related SSD driver in Windows. This often happens in Windows 7 and XP. SSD with SATA interface. Alexis, welcome to these user forums. The most likely reason why your internal SSD drive is not visible is that it is an NVMe drive which is not recognised by the standard Linux based Rescue Media found on your boot CD - this is a known issue when using older versions of Acronis True Image on systems with much later hardware (that was not available when ATIH 2015 was produced). Aug 27, 2020 How Do I Find SSD Not Showing up or Detected in Windows 10? Errors can tamper with your Windows and prevent you from seeing the SSD in your PC.This post helps you determine where these errors lie and fix SSD not showing up in Windows 10.

Is SSD not showing up in My Computer or Disk Management on Windows 10/8/7 when it is plugged into your PC? Here we will tell you the specific reasons, as well as the corresponding solutions to help you out. Try them out to access your SSD and data when it doesn't show up.

SSD Not Showing up Windows 7/8/10

Computer Not Seeing Ssd

Compared to the traditional Hard Disk Drive (HDD), many users prefer the Solid State Drive (SSD) as data storage device due to its many advantages such as fast read-write speed, low power consumption, and lack of noise.

However, an SSD could sometimes not be recognized in Windows 10/8/7 when it is plugged in; that is, you might not see it show up in locations like My Computer, File Explorer or Disk Management.

Since this issue is very common, many users have been trying to find answers to it on the Internet.

When a data storage device cannot be recognized by the computer, none of it could be accessed. So why is it that the device doesn't show up in Windows 10? How do you deal with this problem? Is it possible to get the data back? Don't worry, this post will answer all of those questions.

Here is a video on some methods for you:

Why Is SSD Not Showing up and How to Fix It

Ssd Not Showing Up In My Computer

Generally, this issue could be caused by several reasons. For example:

• The SSD is new and has not been initialized
• SSD partitions are lost and unallocated
• File system of partitions can't be recognized
• Drive letters of SSD partitions are missing
• Partitions are hidden
• Windows doesn't detect SSD
• Driver issues
• Etc.

Here we will provide the specific solutions according to the different cases to fix the issue of SSD not showing up.

Reason 1: New SSD Is Not Initialized

Sometimes, a brand new SSD is not initialized before being plugged into the computer. This will cause the issue of SSD not showing up in Disk Management. How do you solve this issue in order to use the SSD in Windows 10/8/7?

Solution: Initialize this SSD

You need to firstfind Disk Management in Windows 10/8/7 for SSD initialization. Press Win + R and input compmgmt.msc in the Run dialogue to open this tool. Then, there will be a pop-up window saying 'You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it' to suggest you initialize the SSD.

How to initialize SSD to fix the issue of new SSD not showing up Windows 10/8/7? Please choose MBR (Master Boot Record) or GPT (GUID Partition Table) according to your motherboard, and then click OK.

MBR VS GPT, which one is better for your SSD? Focus on the exact difference to get the answer and safely convert your disk to MBR or GPT.

After initialization is finished, you can create a new volume with Disk Management. Then this new partition should show up in Windows Explorer.

Reason 2: SSD Partitions Are Missing

When the SSD isn't new and contains a lot of data, it might not show up in the Windows Explorer when you try to access its files.

In Disk Management, the message 'disk unknown not initialized' might show up due to virus infection, system file corruption, MBR damage, improper operation, etc. Windows also prompts you to initialize it to MBR or GPT SSD.

In this case, it is not wise to initialize this SSD immediately in Windows 10 because all the data on this SSD could be lost. Another situation is that the SSD would appear as online, but the entire disk is 'unallocated'.

In these two situations, Disk Management will not show all the partitions on the SSD and only the unallocated space shows. What should you do to fix unallocated SSD in Windows 10/8/7? The first thing you do should be retrieving the lost partitions and data so the SSD is no longer unallocated.

Solution: Make a Partition Recovery

In order to recover lost partition and data in case of SSD not showing up in Disk Management, you can adopt a professional and reliable program. Fortunately, we have MiniTool Partition Wizard to help you out.

This tool is designed to manage your disk and partition well in areas like partition resizing, disk copy, MBR repair, disk conversion, etc. Among so many features, it owns a core function which is called Partition Recovery. This feature allows the recovering of lost partition and lost data effectively in Windows 10/8/7.

Partition Recovery is a paid feature, so unfortunately you can't recover lost partitions using the Free Edition. However, the Free Edition can still be used to check whether the lost partitions can be scanned; if they can be scanned, you should purchase the Ultimate Edition to recover them.

How to perform this operation to fix SSD not showing up in Windows 7/8/10? Here is the step-by-step guide to recover your partitions.

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard and click Partition Recovery.

Step 2: Choose a target disk for partition recovery.

Step 3: Choose a scanning range for SSD partition recovery. There are three modes; Full Disk should be chosen to scan the entire SSD. Click Next to continue.

Step 4: Then MiniTool Partition Wizard has two scanning methods, Quick Scan and Full Scan. The former can restore your lost or deleted partitions which are continuous; the latter can scan each sector of the specified scanning range on your SSD. If Quick Scan doesn't work well enough, try Full Scan.

Step 5: After SSD scanning is finished, all your lost or deleted partitions will be listed as shown in the following screenshot. Please choose all the partitions you need.

Let's take partition 1 on the SSD as an example. You can review all the files on your computer by double-clicking the partition. The pop-up window shows you the folder structure, so you can just click them to view the files inside. After you finish reviewing, close this window and click Finish to go back to the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Step 6: Finally, click Apply to perform the SSD partition recovery operation. Here all partitions on SSD will appear in Windows Explorer.

After partition recovery, you might find that your SSD does not have a drive letter. In this case, if you open your File Explorer or Windows Explorer, none of the partitions in the SSD shows up. Therefore, it is necessary to assign a drive letter for all partitions with MiniTool Partition Wizard.

If you are experiencing partition loss issue, MiniTool Partition Wizard is your best assistant; get the Ultimate Edition now to scan your lost SSD partitions and recover them.

Reason 3: Partition Is Hidden by Third-party Software

Sometimes, the SSD partition could be hidden by a third-party software in order to prevent access. Consequently, it will be not showing up in the Windows Explorer or File Explorer.

Solution: Unhide Partition

Disk Management does not have an option to unhide a partition or show hidden partitions. In this case, you will again need to use MiniTool Partition Wizard. Fortunately, using the Free Edition will suffice this operation.

Step 1: Right-click on the target drive and click Unhide Partition. Alternatively, select the target partition and click Unhide Partition under the Partition Management menu.

Step 2: Assign a drive letter for this partition.

Step 3: Click Apply to apply these changes.

Computer Not Seeing New Ssd Drive

Reason 4: Drive Letter Is Missing

Sometimes your SSD is properly connected to your PC, showing up in Device Manager, but not showing up in My Computer. In this case, perhaps the drive letter is missing on the SSD partition due to some reasons, so you can't access it in Windows Explorer.

Solution: Assign a Drive Letter

It should be a priority now to change the drive letter for the partition on SSD. How to assign a drive letter to fix the issue of SSD not showing up in My Computer? Here is what you need to do:

Step 1. Launch Disk Management utility. Right-click on This PC or My Computer in Windows 10/8/7, select Manage and then in Storage menu, click Disk Management.

Step 2. Here you can see all the SSD partitions. Now select the partition that is missing a drive letter, right-click it and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Step 3: Click Add, then select a drive letter from the list. Click OK to finish this change.

Alternatively, you can also assign a drive letter in MiniTool Partition Wizard. Here is what to do:

Step 1: Select the target partition on your SSD, and click Change Drive Letter in the left pane.

Step 2: Choose one drive letter.

Step 3: Click the Apply.

After performing this procedure, SSD will show up again in Windows 10/8/7.

Reason 5: SSD Adopts an Unsupported File System

If your SSD is still not showing up in Windows 10 after trying the methods above, you should consider whether the file system is compatible with Windows. If the file system is neither FAT32 nor NTFS, SSD won’t show up.

Solution: Delete Drive and Create FAT32/NTFS Partition

You can also use MiniTool Partition Wizard to delete the SSD partition in Windows 10/8/7 and then create a new NTFS/FAT32 partition. Here, take an Ext3 partition as an example.

Step 1: Right-click the partition to select Delete. Alternatively, directly click Delete Partition in the left panel.

Step 2: After finishing the deletion, click Create Partition. During the process, please choose NTFS or FAT32 as the file system.

Step 3: Execute these changes by clicking Apply.

Reason 6: SSD Not Showing up in BIOS

Another possibility is that the SSD is not connected correctly, causing Windows to not be able to recognize it. This could be shown in BIOS where you can see the computer fails to detect your SSD.

In case of SSD not recognized, what should you do? Please refer to this post The BIOS does not detect or recognize the Solid State Drive to get solutions.

However, if none of the solutions here could remove the issue of SSD not showing up, the SSD is likely damaged and should be replaced. Here are the best sellers in the SSD market:

Bottom Line

In this post, we talked about the issue of SSD not showing up in Windows 10/8/7, why this issue appears, and how to fix it. MiniTool Partition Wizard helps a lot in solving issues regarding SSD and hard drives in general. If you encounter this problem while managing SSD partition data, you can try using the methods mentioned in this post.

Finally, if you have any suggestion or doubt, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below or send an email directly to [email protected]. Your feedback is much appreciated.

SSD Not Showing up FAQ

1. Initialize your SSD
2. Perform a partition recovery
3. Unhide your partition
4. Assign a drive letter
5. Delete the partition with an unsupported file system

1. Troubleshoot hardware faulty
2. Configure the SSD settings in BIOS
3. Update available drivers

Laptop Not Recognizing Ssd