SOLVED Disk Management didn't show all drives until...

[wegmand]

Just wanted to share this with the group:

I have 3 hard drives installed (0, 1, 2) in my Windows 10 computer. I wanted to open a File Explorer window for Drive 1 but it wasn't showing up on the list of drives under 'This PC'. "Where the heck is Drive 1?"

So I opened Disk Management and, sure enough only drives 0 & 2 were shown! Ugh! (Temporary panic.) Now what? I saw the 'Action' tab on the menu bar, clicked it, and saw the 'Rescan Disks' option. That seemed worthy of clicking, so I clicked it... A file explorer window appeared, a search-type scan ensued, and suddenly another explorer window appeared with the Drive 1 contents. YEA! Back to Disk Management, Action, 'Refresh' and, sure enough, Drive 1 is back.

So, any thoughts on why Drive 1 disappeared in the first place? I don't access Drive 1 very often, so was it maybe just taking a nap? Could it be a sign that the drive may be failing? Is it just a Windows 10 anomaly/bug? Bottom line, how worried should I be about good ol' Drive 1?

 

[Regedit32]

Any chance Windows was using Drive 1 for a Storage Pool?

• Type control panel into Cortana search field and press Enter
• Select View by small / large icons
• Select Storage Spaces
  
  If a Storage pool has been generated, you can delete it here, which will then make Disk 1 reappear in Disk Management

 

[wegmand]

Thanks, but no storage spaces have been created. Disk 1 reappeared after I performed the 'Rescan Disks' from Drive Management anyway so the crisis is over.

I never knew about Storage Spaces so I never created any. I'll do some research. Do you think it's a good tool to implement? I already use Drive 2 for backing up my important stuff.

 

[Regedit32]

Storage Spaces is Windows 10 version of a RAID setup. The idea being when you have three or more drives lined up you can use this to protect data loss from a failing drive.

There's a fairly comprehensive article on it you might want to review to see whether or not using this feature meets your needs:

Windows 10 storage spaces — A comprehensive guide

Windows 10 storage spaces is a technology that protects your data from drive failures. It is similar to RAID, except that it is implemented in software.

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