My stepfather has a stack of old SATA hard drives he was curious to see what was on. He bought one of those readers you plug into a wall outlet for power and then to a USB port to read the drive.
When we plug in the usb with the HDD inserted you get the audible sound that windows sees something connected I can’t see any other device other than C:
Based on how many computers these are from, I’m guessing it’s everything from Win XP till Win 10. Would that have anything to do with it? They’ve been stored in a file cabinet, not in harsh conditions. I find it unlikely that they are all bad.
They would show up as Windows drives only if they were already partitioned and formatted using something Windows already recognizes. A drive that’s formatted for a different OS wouldn’t show. Likewise one that’s been actively wiped, which in a sane world would be absolutely guaranteed when putting used storage devices on the market or storing them for future reuse.
If you don’t see mounted drives, odds are good there’s nothing to see on the disks unless you’re willing to go to some extra effort (like booting a more versatile operating system that will recognize more filesystems than Windows does).
I should have been more clear. These are all drives from his computers over the years. They haven’t been wiped, just pulled and put in a file cabinet. All would be Windows, just different versions.
It’s still reasonable to check the drives in the Disk Management tool. As long as the drive can be accessed at all, that tool will tell you at a minimum what the partitions are and whether they’re a recognized filesystem. And if Disk Management can’t make sense of (or detect) the drives, they’re broke. Especially if they’re supposed to be from a compatible operating system.
Open Explorer, hold shift and right click “This PC”. Select “Manage” then go to “Disk Management”. Do they show up there? What format?
If that doesn’t show them, download GParted, either the application or use a spare USB drive to make a Live USB. Reboot, possibly with pushing whatever option lets the BIOS boot to the USB.
All of those should be readable by Windows 11. Do you hear the hard drives themselves powering up and trying to read?
It’s not impossible they all have problems, being stored in the same place. Other issues could be the USB port, the power supply coming in, or the reader device itself. Most I’ve seen are very cheaply made and can be garbage.