How to Find Hard Drive on PC in Windows 11? Here are 3 Solutions

Scenarios: How to find hard drive on PC in Windows 11?

Hard drive missing after Windows 11 updates can be a worrisome event, especially if you store important data on the drive. Today, we will share several solutions for you to easily learn how to find hard drive on PC in Windows 11.

How to find hard drive on PC after Windows updates?

To fix hard drive missing after Windows 11 updates, you can format the hard drive, update and reinstall the drive, or reassign the drive letter. If you suffer data loss, you can move to the tip part to get them back.

Method 1. Format your hard drive

Windows 11 and 10 updates may probably cause file system corruption due to many reasons, besides, driver or file system corruption can occur sometimes, thus resulting in RAW partition. Formatting the RAW hard drive can be a helpful step if the external hard drive not showing up in windows 11 after updates.

Considering that some users may not be familiar with using Diskpart to handle RAW partitions and may likely encounter challenges, especially when trying to format a RAW drive larger than 32GB to FAT32 in Diskpart, resulting in a "The volume size is too big" error message, so we would like to introduce a free solution: AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

This tool simplifies formatting problematic partitions and successfully handles the formatting of large hard drives to FAT32. Besides, if a damaged Master Boot Record (MBR) and bad sectors are causing an external hard drive not to show up in Windows 11, this free software offers straightforward methods to rebuild the MBR and inspect for the bad sectors.

Step 1. Run the AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, click with the right mouse button on the well-functioning primary partition marked as RAW, and select "Format Partition" from the dropdown menu.

Step 2. Choose FAT32, NTFS, or another suitable file system for either your RAW hard drive, and then click "OK."

Step 3. Press "Apply" to commit to format the healthy primary partition for RAW problems.

Method 2. Update or reinstall the driver

With every Windows 11/10 update, certain hardware compatibility issues may arise. If the device driver is not compatible with your current Windows version, it can lead to the hard drive missing after Windows 11/10 updates. To address this issue, you can either update your disk driver to the latest version or reinstall it through Device Manager.

Step 1. Use the Windows search box to find Device Manager and click on the first search result. Navigate to the section labeled Disk drivers and expand it. Then right-click on the external hard drive option and choose the Uninstall device option.

Step 2. Exit Device Manager and restart your computer. Then open Device Manager again. Right-click on the hard drive and choose Update driver.

Step 3. Choose the option "Browse my computer for driver software" to proceed.

Step 4. Choose "Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer" and click Next.

Step 5. Choose the updated hard drive and click Next. Then the updating process will begin. Once it completes, you can close the update interface, Device Manager, and then restart your computer to see whether the problem that the hard drive missing after Windows 11 updates has been fixed.

Method 3. Reassign the drive letter

If your hard drive is no longer visible in File Explorer but appears in Disk Management as unallocated space and hidden, the issue may be due to a missing disk drive letter. At this time, to know how to find hard drive on PC, you can resolve the problem by reassigning the drive letter.

The installed free tool AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard can help you again. You can run this software to easily fix external hard drive not showing up in Windows 11 by resetting the drive letter.

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, it will show you all storage devices in the main interface. If you want to assign a drive letter for the drive, here you need to right-click it and select Advanced > Change Drive Letter.

Step 2. Then, select a drive letter for the drive.

Step 3. Click Apply to submit the task.

Further reading: How to recover data after hard drive missing after Windows 11 updates

If you lost the important data due to hard drive missing after Windows 11 updates, or formatting the drive when learn where to find external hard drive on PC, it is time to upgrade to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. This version provides Recover Data feature.

This feature is applicable in different situations where data loss occurs. Whether due to formatting, system crashes, permanent deletion, or any other reasons, its deep scan mode delves deeply into the disk, identifying fragments of files that can be reconstructed even long after the files were initially deleted from the storage device. This capability enables you to effectively recover lost data.

If you are a Windows Server 2025/2022/2019/2016/2012, 2003 user, you can download the AOMEI Partition Assistant Server edition.

Summary

How to find hard drive on PC in Windows 11? You can format the hard drive, upgrade or reinstall the driver, or reassign the drive letter. If you get data loss during the process, using AOMEI Partition Assistant to recover it easily.

You may find there are many other functions listed in the main interface of the software when fixing hard drive missing after Windows 11 updates. Here we would like to recommend some practical and popular functions: Clone Disk and OS Migration allows you quickly transfer the data to the new device when you want to upgrade your computer or disk. App Mover and Allocate Free Space are proven to be the most effective methods to extend drive space. Rebuild MBR can help you easily fix boot issues at home.