How to Format Internal or External 3TB Hard Drive to FAT32 in Windows 10/8/7?

The Scenario

A user just bought a 3TB external HDD to store all his games so he can play on his PS3. However, his PS3 could not recognize the 3TB external hard drive. The user was confused that why the brand new 3TB external hard drive cannot be recognized by the PS3? Actually, if there is no problem with the external hard drive, it must be the problem of file system. Some users may know that many game mainframes of Microsoft only support FAT32 file system. It cannot recognize NTFS or other file system. Such as Sony PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Media Player, Mac, TV set, etc.

The Problem

Many Microsoft users want to change their new hard drive to 3TB hard drive, or add a 3TB hard drive to extend its storage space. However, the PS3, PS4, Xbox one, XBox360 cannot recognize the 3TB hard drive. Thus, the question is how to solve the problem?

You have already know that it was because of those devices only support FAT32. Thus, you have to format the file system of the hard drive into FAT32.

The Solutions

For formatting 3TB hard drive from NTFS to FAT32, there are three ways you can take. But first you need know that you may meet the problem that you can only use at most 2TB of this 3TB hard drive because if it is MBR disk, it can only support up to 2TB, thus you need convert the MBR to GPT disk firstly.

Windows Disk Management is the disk manager built-in Windows operating system. You can use this tool to format the internal and external hard drive to FAT32. However, if the partition is lager than 32GB, the Windows Disk Management can only format it to NTFS. Thus, when you try to use it to format the 3TB hard drive, you will find the file system only show you “NTFS”.

Fortunately, there are some third party software can help you format internal and external 3TB hard drive to FAT32. Here we highly recommend you AOMEI Partition Assistant to format internal and external 3TB hard drive to FAT32 without losing data.

Format 3TB hard drive to FAT32 with AOMEI Partition Assistant

AOMEI Partition Assistant is a good partition manager that can partition your hard disk safely and quickly. Besides, if you want to format the internal and external 3TB hard drive to FAT32, the AOMEI Partition Assistant must be the best choice. If there are some important data on the partition, back them up first because once you format the partition, all the data on it will be destroyed. You can follow the steps below:

Step1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, you will see its main interface. Right click the partition and select Format Partition.

Step2. It will pop out a window for formatting. SelectFAT32 at the drop down menu of File System, and you can set a partition label and the cluster size according to your requirements. After all the settings, click OK to move on.

Step3. You will back to the main interface, and you can see the F partition is marked as FAT32. Don’t forget to click Apply at the tool bar to submit all the operating system.

Thus, you have already format the 3TB hard drive to FAT32. If the file system of the 3TB hard drive is NTFS, or it has many important data on it, the AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you convert NTFS to FAT32 without losing data, which can save a big trouble for you.

If this method cannot help you format 3TB hard drive to FAT32 successfully, you can try to use the Spilt Partition of AOMEI Partition Assistant to divide the 3TB hard drive into multiple small partitions, and then, format those small partitions into FAT32 with Format Partition features by the way we mentioned above.