220-1101 Question 409
Single answerMissing drives in OSA technician installs a second SATA hard drive in a Windows 10 desktop so a user can store large media files. The system powers on normally, and the new drive is listed with the correct capacity in UEFI/BIOS. However, the drive does not appear in File Explorer. The technician opens Device Manager and sees no errors for disk hardware. Which action should the technician take NEXT to make the drive usable in Windows?
- A
Open Disk Management and initialize the disk, then create and format a new volume
- B
Run SFC /scannow from an elevated command prompt to repair missing system files
- C
Update the motherboard chipset driver so Windows can detect SATA drives
- D
Use MSCONFIG to enable the drive at startup
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
This scenario reflects a common real-world support issue: a newly installed drive is physically connected and detected by firmware, but it is not yet usable in the operating system because it has not been prepared for use. In Windows, the appropriate next step is to open Disk Management, initialize the disk if prompted, create a partition or simple volume, format it, and assign a drive letter. Microsoft documentation and standard desktop support practice both point to Disk Management for bringing new disks online and making them visible in File Explorer. Because the disk is already detected in UEFI/BIOS and shows no Device Manager errors, troubleshooting should focus first on disk provisioning rather than firmware, startup configuration, or Windows file integrity.
- A. Correct.
Correct. If a newly installed drive is visible in UEFI/BIOS and recognized by Windows hardware tools but does not appear in File Explorer, it often has not been initialized, partitioned, or formatted yet. In Windows, Disk Management is the standard tool to bring a new disk online, initialize it as MBR or GPT as appropriate, create a partition/volume, and format it with a file system such as NTFS. Only after those steps will it receive a drive letter and appear in File Explorer.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. SFC checks the integrity of protected Windows system files. It is useful for OS corruption issues, not for preparing a newly installed secondary storage drive. A missing new data drive in File Explorer, when the disk is already detected in firmware, is much more likely to be an uninitialized or unformatted disk.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A chipset or storage controller driver issue can sometimes affect hardware detection, but in this scenario the drive is already visible in UEFI/BIOS and there are no hardware errors in Device Manager. That makes a missing driver less likely than the common situation where the disk simply has not been initialized and formatted.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. MSCONFIG is used to manage startup options, services, and boot configuration, not to enable or provision a storage drive. This distractor reflects a common misconception that all missing devices can be enabled through startup tools.