If it appears Offline as shown here, try right-clicking it and selecting Online. If the disk works after one of these steps, don't bother with the next steps, just kick back, celebrate, and maybe update your backups. There's only so much you can do to fix a failing disk, but here are some steps to try to see if we can get it working again. There are a bunch of reasons a disk or memory card might be missing or fail to initialize, with a common reason being because the disk is failing. Or maybe you have a disk full of important files, and you don't want to erase the disk by initializing it. However, there's a good chance you've already tried this, and it didn't work. Solution: If the drive is brand new and just needs to be initialized, erasing any data on it, the solution is easy - see Initialize New Disks. It's also possible that the disk is having hardware problems or issues plugging in, but we'll get to that in a few paragraphs.

Basically this means that the disk has never been initialized and formatted, or the drive formatting has become corrupted somehow.

If you have a disk that doesn't appear in File Explorer and is listed in Disk Management as Not Initialized, it could be because the disk doesn't have a valid disk signature. After Computer Management opens, go to Storage > Disk Management.ĭisks that are missing or not initialized, plus general troubleshooting steps.Type Computer Management in the search box on the taskbar, select and hold (or right-click) Computer Management, and then select Run as administrator > Yes.How to open Disk Managementīefore we launch into the tricky stuff, here's an easy way to get to Disk Management in case you're not there already: If you still need help, post a question there, or Contact Microsoft Support or the manufacturer of your hardware. If you get an error or something doesn't work when following these procedures - don't panic! This topic is just the first thing to try there's also a ton of info on the Microsoft community site in the Files, folders, and storage section about the wide variety of hardware and software configurations you might be dealing with.

Disk utility not showing up