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I cannot find my external hard drive under "Computer" but it shows up in "Devices and Printers" How do I access the files on my external hard drive?

I cannot find my external hard drive in "Computer".

I just bougth a new HP computer running Windows 7.  I just copied a bunch of picture, music, and movie files from my old Mac (running Leopard OSX) onto a Western Digital external hard drive.

I plugged the External drive into my HP via the USB 2.0 port on the front of the computer.  Windows recognized the drive.  It shows up in Control Panel/Hardware and Sound/Devices and Printers as "External HDD"

It does not show up in "Computer" under "Devices with Removable Storage"

I just want to access my files so I can copy them to my new computer.  How do I access my files on the external drive?  Why isn't it showing up in "Computer"?
Answer
Answer
Hello ShamedMonkey,

Thank you for your post.  The problem you're having is because of the formatting differences between PC and Mac.  You can, however, transfer your files between the two.  I'll lay out what needs to be done below and the limitations for each.

First you will need to format the drive on your PC.  When you format the PC, you can format in either FAT32 or NTFS.

(You mentioned that you can't see the drive in computer) To format the drive:
Click 'Start' > Right-click 'Computer' > Select 'Manage'
Click 'Disk Management'
In the right pane, you should see your drive > You can then right-click and 'Format'

FAT32:

Using this format will allow you to easily transfer files between the two.  This format only becomes problematic when transferring files over 4G.  There is a 4G limit in FAT32, many movies etc are larger than this and will not be able to be transferred using this format.

NTFS

This format has no size limitations, however, in it's standard state it will be 'Read Only' on the Mac.  So you won't be able to transfer any data to it.  By doing some research on the web, it appears that you can use a program called MacFuse on your Mac to edit files in the NTFS format.  I have not confirmed this, but you can give it a try.  If this program works as intended, this would be the way to go.

Please let us know if this did or didn't resolve your problem.

Cheers
Jason Microsoft Answers Support Engineer Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

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Last updated June 19, 2021 Views 57,672 Applies to: