Windows 10-Hard disk does't show up

There are a couple of things from another one of my posts that might be helpful. I know it is a lot to read but here it is. The drive letter was one thing, which file format you use when initializing was another, MBR vs GBT. Another issue was whether the syste used BIOS or UEFI.

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I hope this post helps at least one person that confronts these same issues when installing a 4TB hard drive into an “older” well-loved system.

Here is my story:

All I wanted to do was install my new 4TB drive, transfer a bunch of files to it and relax because I now had more drive space than I'll ever need. (What I said about the 2TB drive it is replacing.)

BUT...

Mistake #1 - I put it in the older (5+ years) Windows 7 64-bit system where I planned on using it and initialized it as MBR. I probably wouldn’t have made this mistake if I had CAREFULLY READ THE DIALOGUE BOX BEFORE I MADE MY CHOICE. I believe the dialogue box said something about using GPT for larger drives. I fixed this by converting the drive to GPT. Search for “convert mbr to gpt” to find a post with the right solution for your situation. Thank you Tom's forums.

Problem #2 - Still would only show 2TB of space available. Figured out that my MoBo was BIOS based NOT UEFI, and I needed UEFI to format it as 4TB. So, I put the drive in a newer system and was able to format, name, and letter it, and it showed up as 4TB.

BUT...

Problem #3 - The drive showed up all nice and new in Disk Management but NOT in Windows Explorer. After a couple of reboots on the new system, some more expletives, and a little more research on Tom's, I was still stumped.

So, I moved the drive back to my older system where I want to use it and tried it there. It showed up in Disk Management, but not Windows Explorer.

It showed up as Disk 2, Basic, 3725.90 GB, Online, TV Recordings, Healthy (Primary Partition). Everything looked fine.

(Note: The following two paragraphs are from my original post from when I was adding the information about it showing up in Disk Management but not Windows Explorer. I’m leaving it here because it is a bit funny, and illustrates that you should always CAREFULLY read EVERYTHING.)

BRB I think I might have spotted the problem. Back. It does NOT have a drive letter.

Another round of every expletive I know.

For some reason when I named the drive and assigned a drive letter (see above), the drive letter didn't "take."

I assigned it a drive letter and now is all copacetic. The drive is installed in my older system, it shows up as 4TB and is accessible through Windows Explorer. (Of course, I had some issues transferring the files but that is another expletive-filled story.)

I hate the "simple" solutions that make me feel like an idiot. Remember you DO need to read the instructions BEFORE starting.

PS – You can NEVER have enough storage space even if it would take several years of 24/7 watching, listening and reading to use those files. I have at least a year’s worth of 24/7 listening of podcasts that are at least 5-years old. A couple of hundred hours of recorded TV. Another 120 hours of ripped CDs, a couple hundred hours of DVDs, another hundred of VHS tapes, and 68 hours of home movies transferred from Hi-8 cassettes, and countless photos and videos from our cameras and phones. I’ll never access most of that, but find comfort that it is there if I ever want to. Of course, it would be gone in a flash if I don’t back it up, so I’ll need another 8TB of drives to do proper backups.