Formatted External Hard Drive (FAT32) Cannot Be Recognized in Windows 7, Help

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Roxanne· Answered on Apr 18, 2024

To make the external hard drive work on Mac and Windows computers, many users will format their drives to FAT32. However, there comes an issue: Windows cannot recognize the external hard drive formatted as FAT32. In this article, I will teach you solid solutions to help you out of this problem.

The FAT32 file system can only support files smaller than 4 GB and is outdated compared to other new formats. On the contrary, NTFS will give you a fresh start as the only file system that Windows systems support. Mac can not read and write on an NTFS external hard drive, but various tools can make the NTFS drive readable and writable.

Phase 1. Convert FAT32 Drive to NTFS on Windows

I recommend you run EaseUS Partition Master, an Omni-bearing partition expert, which can format the FAT32 external hard drive to NTFS effortlessly without losing data. Below is what you should do in detail:

Phase 2. Enable Read and Write on the NTFS External Hard Drive 

After phase 1, your external hard drive is NTFS, which is unrecognizable on Mac. In this case, you can install EaseUS NTFS For Mac on your Mac, enabling you to access the NTFS drive in one click.