Learn how to find missing drives on Windows 10 and how to recover missing files in Windows 10 via corresponding solutions on this page. Besides, there’re related data loss prevention tips.
Hello! I’ve encountered a severe problem. My D drive is suddenly missing, along with my files. Sometimes, when I boot my laptop, this drive disappears immediately. My Windows Explorer becomes lags. All of my files are on my D drive. Thank you for your help!
- A user from Microsoft Community
Have your hard drive disappeared from your Windows PC? Those users who’ve missed drives/partitions are eager to recover missing partitions in Windows 10/11 computers.
If it happens to be your case, how to find missing drives on Windows 10/11? Please go further to get details.
There’s a possibility for you to find your missing drives by rescanning them. Let’s show how it works.
Step 1. Press “Windows + R” and type “diskmgmt.msc” in the Run window. Then click “OK” or hit “Enter” to open it.
Step 2. Under the Action tab, click the “Rescan disks” button.
If there’s no drive letter for your desired drive, you cannot see this drive in File Explorer because Windows OS cannot recognize the unlettered drive. But it also shows that your missing drive might be accessible to you in Disk Management instead of File Explorer.
You can also recover hidden partitions in Windows 7, 8, 10, or 11 computers using this way.
Step 1. Press “Win + R” to open the Run box and type “diskmgmt.msc” in the window. Then hit “Enter” or press “OK” to open Disk Management.
Step 2. After seeing all the drives/partitions, right-click on your desired drive and select the “Change Drive Letter and Paths” option.
Step 3. Select “Add” to add a new drive letter to your chosen drive.
Step 4. Select “Assign the following drive letter” and designate a new letter as the drive letter. Please note that the selected letter needs to be different from all the existing drive letters.
Sometimes, an outdated driver is also blamed for computer hard drives/M.2 drives are not showing up. You can try to update/uninstall the device driver to address this problem. Please ensure you’ve downloaded the latest hard drive from the official website before following this way.
Step 1. Type “Device Manager” in the search bar and open it.
Step 2. Go to Disk Drives and right-click on your desired drive. Then select “Update driver” or “Uninstall driver” as you prefer.
Step 3. Select the “Search automatically for drivers” option. Please wait patiently.
Hardware and Devices Troubleshooter is a powerful Windows built-in tool for locating and correcting hardware and device issues. For instance, if there’s an error message like this device cannot start code 10, this method also applies to this situation.
Step 1. Press “Win + I” to open Windows Settings. Then click the “Update & Security” button.
Step 2. Click “Troubleshoot” on the left, then click “Run the troubleshooter” under the Hardware and Devices tab.
If the above approaches are useless, which implies your missing drives might have been deleted. At this point, there’s no better way than using professional partition recovery software to recover deleted & missing drives.
Multifunction AOMEI Partition Recovery Wizard could be your second-to-none choice because it makes it possible to salvage data saved on your deleted & missing partitions after performing partition recovery.
Let’s perform how to find missing drives on Windows 10/11 computers via three steps, and you can try its free demo version first!
Step 1. After launching this partition recovery software on your PC, under the Partition Recovery Wizard tab, select the disk that includes your desired drive or partition. Then click the “Next” button.
Step 2. Choose “Fast Search” to find missing drives as soon as possible. Then click the “Next” button.
Step 3. After scanning, choose your needed drive among all the recoverable drives or partitions on the window. Then click the “Proceed” button.
After recovery, the window will show a “Congratulations” message. You can click “Finish” to end the process.
Compared with disappeared hard drives, document loss is also one of the common data loss scenarios. Careless users often rush into performing file recovery without choosing a targeted solution.
Some users even continue adding new files to their Windows computers after data loss, which can decrease the possibility of data recovery.
In general, missing files usually contain hidden files, recently deleted, and permanently deleted files. And four points deserve your attention before performing file recovery.
Since a large number of users haven’t cultivated a good habit of making regular backups, let’s perform how to recover missing files in Windows 10/11 PC using Windows data recovery software like MyRecover.
Download MyRecover on your Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, or Windows Server computers to recover desktop files from hard drives!
Step 1. Launch MyRecover on your PC and hover the mouse over the partition including your needed files. Then click Scan.
Step 2. Locate your desired files by Name, Date, Type, Size, or Path. You can also see all the deleted and other missing files after running Quick Scan and Deep Scan.
Step 3. Go to the Deleted Files/Other Missing Files folder, and click “Recover x files” to get your selected documents back. Please remember to store these recovered files in another path.
How to find missing drives on Windows 10? How to recover missing files in Windows 10 computers? Please get corresponding solutions from the above content.
And there’re some related data loss prevention measures for you, especially for deleted items (drives & files).