I've recently converted a hard drive from an old TiVo box into an external hard drive, and I'm trying to use it with my HP Windows 10 laptop. The drive is a Western Digital 2TB, but I'm facing a problem because it doesn't appear in my file explorer, and I can't transfer files onto it. I'm hoping to use this drive as temporary storage for Photoshop, but I need help figuring out how to get it recognized and functional. Any advice would be appreciated!
2 Answers
Have you tried partitioning the drive? If you haven’t, that might be the reason why it isn't showing up. You can do this by using the Disk Management tool. Just hit the Windows key, type 'diskmgmt.msc', and that should open it up for you. From there, you should be able to see the drive. You might need to create a partition and format it. Go for exFAT formatting since it's compatible with most systems, and don't forget to assign it a drive letter. That might help it show up!
To get your drive working, you'll want to ensure it's properly set up in Disk Management. Open it up like GadgetGuru mentioned, and check if the drive shows up there. If it does, you can create a big partition and format it as exFAT. Make sure to do a slower format if you're concerned about potential bad sectors. Once formatted, it should appear in your file explorer!
I haven't partitioned it. How do I do that?