I just performed a clean Windows installation, and now my C: and D: NVMe drives no longer appear in the lower part of File Explorer's navigation pane. My other SATA-connected HDDs and SSDs are still listed there. The NVMe drives may still be accessible elsewhere, so I'm trying to figure out whether they were simply unpinned or whether Windows failed to assign their drive letters. What's the best way to restore them to the sidebar?
3 Answers
If the NVMe drives aren’t visible under “This PC” at all, check Disk Management. Press Win+R, enter diskmgmt.msc, and confirm both drives or their partitions are detected and have drive letters. If one is missing a letter, right-click its partition, choose “Change Drive Letter and Paths,” and assign one.
If the drives appear under “This PC,” they probably just weren’t pinned after the reinstall. Open File Explorer, select “This PC,” then right-click each drive and choose “Pin to Quick access,” or drag them into the navigation pane. Windows may also show only removable drives in that particular sidebar section by default.
Computer Management is another place to verify whether Windows detects the disks. If the SATA drives are showing in the sidebar but you want a more consistent layout, some systems also let you mark SATA ports as non-removable in the firmware settings, which can change how they appear in File Explorer.
That behavior is especially annoying in Windows 11 if you use File Explorer frequently. You can make “This PC” the default starting location so all your drives are immediately visible.