D Drive Not Showing Up In Windows 10: Reasons And Solutions [Disk Recovery]

Many users Windows have encountered or are facing a rather troublesome inconvenience"D drive not showing up«. Why does this problem occur? How to fix it? How to recover important data from missing D drive? All these questions are addressed in this article. Follow our tips to the letter and you will see that you will be able to recover your drive quickly and without any secondary inconvenience.

D Drive not showing up

The D drive is usually a secondary hard drive and is often used to store personal data and documents. However, thousands of Windows users said they encountered that “D drive is missing« – The drive is not visible in either File Explorer or Disk Management.

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D drive not showing up after Windows 10 update

If after upgrading to Windows 10 Home Edition, you can't see your D drive, please rescan your drives using Disk Management first. Here are the steps you need to follow:

• Step 1: go to dialog box Run by clicking Windows + R. place msc in the box and press Accept. This is done in order to open Disk management.
• Step 2: click on the tab Actions and then choose the option Rescanning disks.

Reasons why D drive is missing

Si D drive still not showing up, the following reasons are likely to be responsible for “D drive missing”:

1. It is possible that the D drive is accidentally deleted: This reason may seem ridiculous, but it is possible. Remember what you did before you discovered the problem.
2. The drive letter D may be occupied by the CD/DVD drive or flash drive USB: Sometimes when installing the system on some servers, the drive letter D is assigned to the CD-ROM drive by default. In this position, the D drive does not appear. The USB flash drive may also occupy the D drive letter. If you use it to install the system but do not remove it immediately during the installation, the system will treat it as the D drive, and other drives will be marked as F/G.
3. D drive is hidden: To identify whether your D drive is hidden, you just need to perform a simple calculation: check whether the capacity of all drives and unallocated space is equal to the disk capacity. If not, it indicates that your D drive has been hidden by a system tool.
4. D drive may be included in C drive: Some users said that they chose the wrong option when installing the system, which caused the entire hard drive to be mounted as a C drive.
5. The drive drivers are outdated: Outdated drive drivers can also cause drive D not to appear on your computer.

These are the most common reasons why D drive is not showing up in Windows. Now, scroll down to see how to recover lost data and get D drive back.

Solution 1: Restore lost data on D Drive

Since D drive is often used to store personal data and documents, many users who encounter “D drive not showing up on computer” are worried about their data and are eager to know how to restore important data from the drive.

If “D drive not showing up in Windows” is due to the first reason above or the fourth reason and there is no backup. Data recovery is necessary. Here it is highly recommended that you try MiniTool Partition Wizard to recover your important data from D drive.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is a professional partition manager, expert in partition and data recovery, partition and disk backup, disk health test, and more.

Restore lost data from disappeared D drive

Here is the step-by-step tutorial on how to recover data with MiniTool Partition Wizard when D drive not showing up on computer:

• Step 1: get MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate.
• Step 2: After installing the software, run it to enter the main interface.
• Step 3: Click on the function Data recovery on the top toolbar.

• Step 4: You will see a new interface where all detected disks and partitions are displayed. Scroll down the interface and double-click the drive that included the missing drive from the Hard Drives section.

• Step 5: The software automatically starts scanning the selected disk and finds the lost data. Please wait patiently.

• Step 6: When the scan is complete, select the data you want to restore and then click the button Save.

Nota: Save the restored data to another disk if you are not sure whether all necessary files have been selected, because unselected but important data might be overwritten if you save the selected data to the same disk.

Create a new D drive if you need it

After recovering all necessary data, you can create a new D drive if the original drive was deleted and you need one to store personal data. You can create a new D drive using Disk Management or MiniTool Partition Wizard. Let's take using MiniTool Partition Wizard as an example here:

• Step 1: opens MiniTool Partition Wizard again if you have closed it.
• Step 2: Right click on the non-disk space and then choose the option Create.

• Step 3: Choose the partition type, file system, drive letter (D), etc. Then customize the new drive size and click the button Accept.

• Step 4: Press the button Apply on the main interface.

If C drive swallowed D drive and you need a second drive to save files. You can shrink C drive. In this case, the function Move / Change partition size built-in MiniTool Partition Wizard is still helpful. The whole process is:

Nota: The ideal capacity of C drive is 100GB to 150GB if you are running Windows 10. You may be interested in the size of Windows 10.

• Step 1: highlights unity C and choosing the function Move / Change partition size in the left panel.
• Step 2: Drag the right triangle to the left and then click
• Step 3: push the button Apply to execute pending operations.

Solution 2: Reassign the D drive letter to the original D drive

Since it is possible that the unit of CD / DVD or the flash drive USB occupy the drive letter, reassign the drive letter D to the original drive via Disk management.

Case 1: The CD/DVD drive occupies drive letter D

In this case, the procedure is as follows:

• Step 1: opens Disk management.
• Step 2: locates the unit of CD / DVD en Disk management and see if the drive letter is D. If the drive letter CD / DVD es D, follow the steps below.
• Step 3: Right click on the CD drive and then choose the option Change drive letter and paths.

• Step 4: click the button Change, then choose another driver letter for your CD or DVD drive from the drop-down menu and finally click the button Accept.

• Step 5: click the button Yes to confirm this change when you see a message as shown in the following screenshot.

• Step 6: Now, you can reassign the D drive letter to your original D drive.

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Case 2: USB flash drive occupies drive letter

In this case, you just need to change the unit E / F / G to the unit D / E / F activating the option Change drive letter and paths en Disk management.

Solution 3: Show your D drive using the local group policy editor

To display your drive via the local group policy editor, do the following:

• Step 1: go to dialog box Run pressing Windows + R simultaneously.
• Step 2: write msc in the dialog Run and then press the button Accept to open the Local Group Policy Editor.

• Step 3: in the window of Local Group Policy Editor, navigate to the route below:

User Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / File Explorer

• Step 4: look for the option Hide these specified units in My PC on the right side of the window. Then right click and choose the option Edit.

• Step 5: select option Not configured and then click Apply> OK to execute the change.

Solution 4: Update your drive driver

Try updating your drive driver and see if the D drive rolls back. Here is the procedure to follow:

• Step 1: write Device Manager in the Windows search bar and select the search result.
• Step 2: look for the Disk Drives category and expand it.
• Step 3: Right click on the disk that appears in the list, under the category Disk drives and then choose the option Update Driver.

• Step 4: Choose the option Search automatically for updated driver software on the next page. Your system will search and find the audio drivers automatically.

FAQ about D Drive not showing up

These are some of the frequently asked questions and doubts by users who encounter the D drive not showing up. The questions are presented with their respective answers:

How do I restore my D drive?

If you want to restore the entire D drive, you can try performing a partition recovery.

How do I enable D drive in Windows 10?

It is easy to add a D drive in Windows 10. Just follow the procedure below:

• Step 1: opens Disk management. This is achieved by clicking on the Windows icon located on the taskbar and then choosing the utility Disk management that you can find on the menu.
• Step 2: Right click on the unallocated space and then choose New Simple Volume.
• Step 3: press the option Next.
• Step 4: Follow the screen to customize your D drive, including its size, drive letter and file system.
• Step 5: click Finalize.

How do I check the storage of my D drive?

There are many ways to check the storage from your D drive. You can open the File Browser o Disk management and you will see the drive storage. If you want to see what files are on the drive, check what is taking up space on your hard drive.

Can I put games on my D drive?

Of course you can. However, please note that it is not recommended that you mount your C drive unless the unused space on this drive is more than 20GB.

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Final thoughts

This post talks about the five cases of “D drive not showing up” and shows you how to recover lost data easily and quickly. The common cases of “D drive not showing up” and the corresponding fixes have been covered in the above content. If there is anything unclear, please leave a message in the comment section and we will reply as soon as possible.

Have you restored data, created a new partition D and shrunk your C drive with MiniTool Partition Wizard? If you have any questions while running the program, please write them in the section dedicated to user comments. We will get back to you as soon as possible. To avoid data loss caused by problems when D drive not showing up, back up your PC regularly. It never hurts to create backups for your PC to prevent this.