Instead, they’re in a totally blank state–the idea is that the end user will do what they wish with the drive, so there is no benefit to preformatting or otherwise changing the drive at the factory.Īs such, when you put the drive in your system, Windows simply waits for you to decide what to do with the drive instead of automatically formatting and adding it to the drive list. Unlike the hard drive that ships with an off-the-shelf computer or external drive, extra hard drives you purchase aren’t always shipped formatted and ready to use. Or maybe you followed along with our external hard drive tutorial and can’t figure out why, even though you can hear the disk whirring away in the enclosure, you don’t see the disk in Windows.
RELATED: How to Turn an Old Hard Drive Into an External Drive You grabbed a nice big hard disk on sale, you cracked open your computer case, plugged the drive into the motherboard and power supply with the appropriate cables (no? better double check that before you keep reading), and when you booted your computer back up the new hard drive was nowhere to be found. The Most Common Reason Your Disk Is Missing
