Some users find that Disk Management Windows 11 doesn’t recognize new SSD or HDD. This guide will show you how to solve this problem with easy fix.
It’s quite thrilling when you have a new SSD for your PC because usually, a new disk means better performance and bigger capacity. For Windows 11 users, since this OS has the 22H2 version(Sun Valley 2), some of them may wish to replace the old disk with a new SSD for the new version.
But when they install a new SSD on the PC, the new SSD doesn’t appear in Disk Management or Device Manager. Some also confront that the SSD may not appear when they install Windows. When this occurs, users are unable to access data on the SSD device.
No matter which situation you confront, the point is how to fix it. For better help, we’ll separately show you how to solve new disks not showing up in Windows and how to solve old disks disappearing in Windows. You can skip to the exact method according to your situation. But, in the beginning, please check all connection is steady and make sure your disk doesn’t have physical damage.
If you’re using a new disk, which means this disk hasn’t been initialized and formatted, you need to initialize it at the first stage. By the way, some old disks may show a “Disk unknown not initialized” error, this case can also be fixed by the following steps.
Part 1. How to initialize SSD in Windows 11
Step 1. Open Disk Management on your computer.
Step 2. Find and right-click the SSD you want to initialize, and then click "Initialize Disk".
Step 3. In the Initialize Disk dialog box, select the disk(s) to initialize. You can select whether to use the master boot record (MBR) or GUID partition table (GPT) partition style. If you wish to use this disk as a system disk, you can directly choose GPT.
Note: If you need more information to make the decision, you can go to MBR vs. GPT, Which is better for SSD.
Part 2. How to partition SSD in Windows 11
Now your new SSD should be recognized. But it’s not enough for use. After you initialized your new disk, you’ll need to format your disk to give it a file system for storing data.
Right-click the unallocated space of your disk, and choose “Format”. Select “NTFS” and click “OK” to confirm the operation.
Now, your disk is ready. You’ll see one partition on your disk, if you need, you can create a new partition to quickly partition the whole disk.
Unlike the above situation, the possible reasons that make your current SSD/HDD not show are various. So we list some methods to help you.
Method 1. Assign a new disk letter
SSD not appearing may be caused by the SSD's drive letter being absent or clashing with another disk, causing the Windows OS to fail to identify it. You may resolve this issue by manually assigning a new drive letter to the SSD in Windows Disk Management.
Step 1. Right-click on "This PC", and select "Manage". Under the Storage section, click "Disk Management".
Step 2. Right-click on the SSD partition and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths…".
Step 3. Among Add, Change, and Remove, click the "Change" button, and then select a drive letter from the list. Click "OK" to confirm.
Method 2. Update drivers
Another condition of SSD not showing up is if it's running on outdated drivers. Try to update the SSD driver to check if this helps fix the issue.
Step 1. Type "Device Manager" in the start-up menu's search field. Click on "Enter" to launch it.
Step 2. Go to the Disk drives, and right-click on every item under it.
Step 3. Click on "Update driver." Then reboot your PC.
Method 3. Format the disk
If the file system has corrupted, your SSD will also disappear from your PC. You may see your disk marked as RAW or Unallocated. In this case, you’ll have to format your disk. The operation is the same as formatting a new SSD.
Step 1. Go to This PC or Disk Management, and right-click on the RAW partition or drive, select "Format".
Step 2. Set Volume Label, File System (NTFS), and Allocation unit size. The default format option is Quick Format. Then, click "OK" to start the operation.
Step 3. After reformatting, you can access and use the RAW file system partition or drive as standard.
If Disk Management doesn’t work for your RAW drives for some reason, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, a free disk and partition manager for Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP OS. It supports NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, Ext2, Ext3, and Ext4 file systems, you can use it to fix internal/external disks of the computer not showing up or other disks that can’t work well on other devices.
Step 1. Download the free partition manager - AOMEI Partition Assistant, and install and launch it.
Step 2. Right-click the drive not recognized and then select the "Format Partition" option from the context menu.
Step 3. Click the drop-down menu, select "NTFS or FAT32" file system and click OK to move on.
Step 4. Click "Apply" and then "Proceed" to start the formatting process.
Besides the format feature, this tool also has more practical features compared with Disk Management. You can clone/merge/wipe/defrag drives, PC cleaner, convert file system between FAT32 and NTFS without formatting, test disk speed, etc.
What’s more, if you upgrade to the Professional Edition, you can use more features like transferring installed apps to another drive/disk without reinstalling, migrating OS to another disk, converting disk to MBR/GPT without data loss, allocating free space to the C drive…
Method 4. SSD not showing up during Windows 11 install process
Step 1. Press "Shift + F10" to open the command prompt in the Windows Setup window.
Step 2. Type "diskpart" in the pop-up window and hit "Enter".
Step 3. Type the following commands in order, and press "Enter":
• list disk • select disk m (m is the disk number of the SSD disk.) • clean
Step 4. Try to install Windows 11 again.
If Disk Management in Windows 11 can’t recognize your new SSD or hard drive, you can try the methods in the post. AOMEI Partition Assistant is a helpful disk manager for all Windows users, you can create a disk backup via disk cloning when your SDD/HDD works well to avoid data loss when it can’t work normally.
And this tool also has the Sever Edition to assist you in efficiently and securely managing Windows Server 2025/2022/2019/2016/2012(R2)2008(R2)/2003.