# Solved: New Seagate 3TB hard drive doesn't show up in My Computer



## dst79 (Dec 2, 2012)

I recently purchased a Seagate Backup Plus 3TB hard drive with USB 3.0 connector. I connected the 3.0 cable to a 2.0 port(don't have 3.0 ports) and windows popped up saying installing drivers for new device, pretty standard stuff. After it was done I went to My Computer, but the hard drive does not show up.

I checked device manager, and it does show the drive there. When I clicked properties and tried populating the "volumes" section, a 2.8tb section did show up, but had no label, but i don't know the significance of that. Any help with this is appreciated, thanks in advance.

~Dev


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## Oddba11 (May 13, 2011)

What is the status in Drive Management?

It sounds like the drive simply isn't partitioned or formatted. But most external drives ship formatted.


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## dst79 (Dec 2, 2012)

Status: Online
and it is partitioned. And as I read on the box, it is suppose to have the install files for the Seagate Dashboard already on it, so it had to be formatted and partitioned.


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## dai (Mar 7, 2003)

in disk management give it a drive letter


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Try removing all volumes on the drive in Disk Management. Create new one(s).

Drives will only appear in explorer if they can be mounted, and that means that they contain a file system recognized by Windows.

What sizes are the current partitions? If any is over 2 GB, you will need to re-initialize the drive and use GPT partitioning to access it in Windows.


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## dst79 (Dec 2, 2012)

This is how it looks in device manager:









Now the its a 2.8tb partion so that might be the problem.

On a side note, because this might be important, I have another 1tb external hard drive that i have been using for over a year, that i have split up into 3 partions. Recently, i can only access the videos partion, the others showing up in device manager, but not on my computer.









I only bring this up because the unlisted partions look the same so that might be the problem, but like i said, this is a very recent problem.


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## managed (May 24, 2003)

Post a screen-shot of Disk Management (Start > Run type DISKMGMT.MSC press Enter).

Increase the size of it's window if necessary to show all the info.


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## dst79 (Dec 2, 2012)

Thank you. When I opened DiskMGMT I right clicked the partion and gave it a drive letter, after which I fixed not only my 3tb hd but my 1tb as well. They both instantly showed up in my computer. Just a follow up question, can you think of a reason that they weren't given drive letters automatically?


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