Can't See Drive in "Computer"

[trainspotting]

Doesn't show up under "my computer". When I look under Computer Mgmt -> Storage -> Disk Management I see it listed by drive name (ST31500541AS) but it has a yellow triangle with an explanation point in it. Right-clicking doesn't bring up the option to assign a drive letter like on the other drives. This is a Seagate 1.5 TB drive I just transferred from another PC to a new build. Already have 2 1 TB Western Digital drives on board. Running W7 Pro.

How can I get the drive to show up? Thanks for your help

 

[Soundmanred]

Is there an option to "bring online" or something like that?

 

[nanaki333]

are you right clicking the partition of that drive, or the disk to the right of it? as soundmanred said, there should be an option to bring online if it's a drive you brought over.

 

[Nothinman]

What was on the drive? Is it a dynamic disk? Is there a tool tip telling you what the exclamation point means?

 

[Jeff7181]

FYI, initializing the disk will erase the contents.

 

[C1]

Perhaps your just being asked to mount the drive.

There is not enough info. If the subject drive has an OS partition on it (particularly an NT one), then use a utility to first toggle it to be non-bootable and non-hidden. Then mount the drive (if necessary) and make it active (usually not necessary).

 

[trainspotting]

This is a data disk...no OS present. In disk management it shows a space for the disk (with the name in paren. as shown above). If I rt-click on the left-most portion of the row, the only options are to "import" and "convert to basic...disk" which warns will result in data loss. The type of disk shown on the left hand size is "dynamic" with "foreign" listed. Is this normal for a data disk? I thought you just plugged it in and Windows would recognize it.

 

[Jeff7181]

Ok, so it is a dynamic disk... possibly part of a mirror or spanned array? Otherwise known as software RAID.

 

[nanaki333]

where did you get the disk from? what type of machine? was it from an old win7 install, xp, linux, etc? you can try importing it. it SHOULD be a simple plug 'n play if it was a fat32 or ntfs disk. bringing over a dynamic disk you sometimes have to activate it in disk management, which isn't a big deal.

 

[trainspotting]

It's just a single NTFS data disk from an XP install. No RAID or spanned array. The little icon of a little yellow shield with an explanation point has me puzzled...I've not seen it before. Oh, BTW the disk does show up with the other SATA drives in the BIOS at start up.

 

[Nothinman]

If it wasn't part of any array then it should be safe to import it as a dynamic disk.

 

[trainspotting]

but won't that delete the data on the disk? I have a disk image among other things that I need to keep on the disk.

 

[nanaki333]

it will not delete anything if you import the disk.

 

[Nothinman]

Importing doesn't delete anything, initializing does. Why did you make it a dynamic disk in the first place if you're not familiar with them?

 

[trainspotting]

Importing worked! Thanks for your help (and patience) I don't remember changing it to a dynamic disk (at least on purpose anyway). Thanks for your help (all who commented). I learned something today!.