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How to Add New Hard Drive to Windows 10/11

Add New Hard Drive to Windows 10

Most Windows computers come with a single hard drive. But you may want to add a second hard drive if you are running out of disk space.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to add a new hard drive in Windows 10 and 11. I assume you have already physically attached the hard drive to your computer.

  1. Open Disk Management Tool - To open the Disk Management tool right-click on the Windows Start button and choose Disk Management. In the Disk Management tool, you should see your second hard drive is listed. If this is a new hard drive, the status will be "Not Initialized" and it will have a little red icon.Open Windows 10 Disk Management Tool
  2. Initialize Disk - Before we create new partitions, we need to Initialize the new disk. To initialize the disk, right-click on the disk label and select "Initialize Disk".Initialize Disk windows 10
  3. Choose Partition style - You need to select a partition style—either MBR or GPT. Choose GPT if your computer has UEFI BIOS; otherwise, choose MBR. You can check if your computer uses UEFI by going to the System Information.

    Check if Your PC Uses UEFI or Legacy BIOS in Windows 10/11

    Choose GPT as the Partition style
  4. Create a New Partition - Now we can create one or more windows partitions from our new disk. To create a partition, right-click on the unallocated space and select "New Simple Volume".Windows 10 Create New Partition From New hard drive
  5. Specify Partition Size - In the New Simple Volume Wizard, specify the size of the new partition. If you only want to create one partition, allocate the maximum available disk space.Specify the size of the new windows 10 partition
  6. Assign Drive Letter - Next, select a drive letter for the new Windows Partition.Select a Drive Letter for the new Windows 10 Partition
  7. Format Partition - Finally, select the file system type (NTFS) to create a new Windows 10 partition.Format New Hard Drive Windows 10

The new hard drive has been successfully added to Windows. The new partition is now available in File Explorer.

How to Add New Hard Drive to Windows 10

Summary - Add Hard Drive Windows 10/11

In this tutorial, we learned how to add a new hard drive to Windows 10 and Windows 11 using the Disk Management tool. First, we initialized the new hard drive, then created a new partition from the unallocated space.