New Hard Drive No Drive Letter

[GTKramer]

Recently purchased a new Western Digital WD5000AZLX 500Gb Hard Drive (pre-loaded with Windows 10) and installed on a HP Desktop with 3Gb of RAM running XP. It is recognized in Startup Configuration and in the Administration Computer Management Tool. It is listed as "Disk 1" .. 465.76 GB - "Healthy (GPT Protective Partition) .. but no drive letter. Troubleshoot doesn't help. I tried the DISKPART utility, but I am unfamiliar how to use it. How can I fix this problem, if at all.

GTKramer

 

[captaincranky]

Or, "control panel" > "Administrative tools" > "Computer management" > "Storage" > "Disk Management", which will leave you at a new GUI showing all the disks on the system. Any drive that is not formatted or assigned a letter will show the capacity as a black line, Disks assigned a drive letter and are operational wil show the capacity as a blue line. From there you can format / partition, and assign a drive letter.

While this may not be as quick as a Command prompt, it is better visually.

(The series of commands is good for XP through Win 7. Not sure about Win 10).

 

[wiyosaya]

While this may not be as quick as a Command prompt, it is better visually.

(The series of commands is good for XP through Win 7. Not sure about Win 10).

In Win 10, open the start menu and start typing "disk management" from there, depending on the version of 10, you will either get an entry that says "Disk Management" or "Create and format hard disk partitions" Run that, and it should say "Disk Management" in the title bar.

Or simply type "Control Panel" with the start menu open and follow the Captain's directions.