How to Check What Is on a Hard Drive
Advances in computer hardware technology have led to constantly increasing hard-drive capacities. A 500-GB hard drive is common on most new computers, and the sizes go all the way into the terabytes. With all of the data that larger hard drives can hold, combined with the popularity of downloading and storing digital media, it can be easy to lose sight of all of the material on your hard drive. You can check the contents of a hard drive on a Windows-based PC by following a few simple steps.
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Instructions
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Click once on the Windows "Start" button and select the "Explore" option. This will generate a separate pop-up window. Depending on the number of hard drives and share drives to which you are connected, it could take a minute or so to populate the necessary data to the pop-up window.
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Use the "Folders" section to the left of the "Explore" window to search for the hard drive for which you want to check the contents. Most internal hard drives are listed near the top of the selections and labeled as "C" and "D" drives, and some are simply listed as "Local Disk" or "Local Hard Drives." External drives are usually located near the bottom of the listings and are listed by the letter of the port to which they are connected and manufacturer name.
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Click once on the listing of the hard drive that you want to check. The folders and documents contained on the hard drive will be listed in the right area of the screen by name. You can sort the data by clicking once on the header names. To view the folder contents, double-click on the folder icon. To move back to the previous screen, click once on the green "Back" arrow near the top left of the "Explore" window.
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