So, this is a bit of an odd one, but hoping someone has tackled this issue before. I have an old 1TB drive that was in my unraid server until I swapped it out for a larger drive. I just put it in a new Windows machine (not a new unraid server) and tried to format. I can format successfully and assign a drive letter. But, when I try to access the drive, I get the message "Location is not available. D:\ is not accessible. The device is not ready."

 

Everything I could find about that error seems to be about USB drives and hasn't been helpful. Any ideas?

Give this a shot, and see if it helps.

 

Right click on your start button. Click on "Command Prompt Admin" or "Windows Power Shell (Admin)"

type: 

diskpart

In the DISKPART> prompt, type:

list disk

You'll get something like:

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online           30 GB  1024 KB        *
  Disk 1    Online            1 TB  FOO  KB        *

DISKPART>

 

In my example, I'll reset disk1, type:

select disk 1

then   Be certain you have the correct drive selected prior to clean.

clean

This will re-initialize the disk, then using MS tools it can be rebuilt, "the Microsoft way."  If you select the disk that has Windows on it, it won't let you run clean, but any other drive no issue. 

 

Next, right-click on Windows button and click on, "Disk management."

A pop-up should come up asking if you want to initialize the 1TB drive. Defaults should be OK. (GPT, default values in the wizard, give it what drive letter you want). 

That should make it good to go.

 

If you suspect the drive at all, HD Tune is helpful utility, mainly its "Health" (SMART status) and "Error Scan" (block surface scan); for calling the hardware good/bad.

 

Jcloud, you're my hero. I tried pretty much everything else in diskpart before, but not clean! It worked like a charm. Thanks so much.

Quote

It worked like a charm. Thanks so much.

 

Great, glad I could give back to community for a change. Please edit your original post title to include "(Solved)"