This will limit/impact the checks that you run but do whatever is possible for the drive. Basic checksĪ hard drive that doesn’t show up in Windows 10 may be internal or external. If your old HDD is not showing up in Windows 10, run through these basic checks, and then try the fixes listed below. The drive may spin up, and you will actually hear it working, but it may not appear in File Explorer on Window 10, it may not be listed as a location for installing an OS, and you may not even be able to access it from the Disk Management tool. When hard drives get old, their problems manifest in all sorts of ways but failure to connect or to be detected by an OS is often at the forefront. If you start to see problems with a hard drive, you should back up its contents before it fails. Many hard drives will outlive their three-year life estimate and the entire drive may not fail completely but it will develop problems over time.
On average, you can expect a hard drive to last three years before you see a drop in performance. Extensive use can shrink the lifespan of a hard drive further than its expected life span.
