AOMEI Partition Assistant
4 Fixes for “Hard Drive Not Showing up in BIOS” in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7
If your computer cannot detect your hard drive or BIOS cannot read or recognize the ATA or SATA hard drive, you can refer to this article and find solutions here.
By Dervish / Updated on May 12, 2023
Scenario
I recently built my computer. I put a motherboard that has 6.0 GB SATA. When I turned my computer on, my hard drive didn't show up when it booted. I went into the BIOS, and it wasn't there. This drive is very important to me. I really need some help. Thank you.”
How to fix hard drive not showing up in BIOS
I guess many of you have this same or similar problem with your hard drive. If your hard drive does not show up in BIOS boot options, it will not be visible to Windows either. Some users say that this issue should be fixed by restarting the computer. However, this is not a guaranteed fix and it cannot fix the issue from the source. To solve this issue, you can follow the methods below.
▶ Method 1. Check cable and USB port
Sometimes, the drive may not be recognized or detected by the PC because the hard drive data cable gets loose or the USB port is dead. Therefore, you can try to change another cable or change another USB port to see if it can be detected. If not, check the next method.
▶ Method 2. Enable USB Device in BIOS
If your drive is not detected successfully, there are chances that it is turned OFF in BIOS (System Setup). Some motherboard manufactures disable unused ports in the BIOS by default. In this case, you will need to enter the BIOS setup to verify its current state.
You can press a certain key (depended on your own computer manufacturer) while booting the computer to enter BIOS to check whether the USB device is enabled.
▶ Method 3. Update hard drive drivers
The damaged or outdated drive may be the cause of SATA or ATA hard drive not detected in BIOS. Therefore, you can try to update drivers and to see whether the problem is fixed or not.
1. Click "Start" button, type "device manager" in the Search Box and hit Enter.
2. Select "Device Manager", expand categories to find the name of your hard drive. Right-click the device and select "Update Drive Software…," then select Search automatically for updated driver software.
3. There is something wrong with your drive if there is a yellow exclamation point beside the device. Right-click on the device that has a yellow exclamation point beside it and click "Properties." Under the "General" tab, click on "Troubleshoot" and follow the instructions to solve it.
4. If you cannot fix driver issue with the above steps, try reinstalling the driver. Uninstall drive from Device Manager, then restart PC and Windows will automatically reinstall the drivers on the hard drive for you.
▶ Method 4. Initialize hard drive and format it
When a hard drive is not initialized, you cannot save data on it. And BIOS cannot recognize the hard drive. This issue often happens to a new hard drive. To initialize hard drive, you can use a third-party software.
AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is a powerful utility that is designed for Windows 11/10/8/7 and Windows XP/Vista. The initialize Disk feature allows you to initialize the disk quickly and easily. Free download it and try it now.
Step 1. To initialize the disk, download AOMEI Partition Assistant first and launch the software. Then make a bootable CD/USB and boot from the bootable device and enter the WinPE. It will bring you to the main interface of AOMEI Partition Assistant.
Step 2. At the main interface of AOMEI Partition Assistant, right-click the hard drive that you want to initialize and select Initialize Disk.
Step 3. Select initialize Disk to MBR or GPT style.
Step 4. Click Apply to submit the operation.
After initializing the new disk, you can create a new partition on the unallocated space, and format it to a file system that can be recognized by Windows operating system like FAT32, NTFS, exFAT. This could solve new external hard drive not detected in BIOS issue.
Besides these functions, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional can also fix other errors, such as, Windows won't boot from hard drive, corrupted hard drive, Windows 10 BCD repair, etc.
Summary
There are altogether 4 methods to fix hard drive not showing up in BIOS in Windows 11/10/8/7. You can try those methods one by one until you find the one that works for your situation. If none of the methods worked, do not hurry to abandon the drive. You can hand it over to professional hard drive diagnostic software to check if you have to replace it or not.
To avoid such issues in the future and cause data loss, you can clone hard disk to another disk for a backup via AOMEI Partition Assistant. To manage hard disk partition in Windows Server better, please try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.
