Windows 10: External NTFS formatted drive shows as unallocated space in Win11 but works fine in Win10

Drive shows in computer management as unallocated and obviously gets no drive letter. Tested on 2 Win11 laptops. Tested on 4 Win 10 machines and filesystem is fine, drive mounts and functions as expected.

:)

 

unallocated space in G drive (external)

after formatting g drive to remove unwanted stuff

my space was reduced to 32 gb from 55.89 gb

i used the windows formatting command

is there a way that i can reformat it back to get the 23.9 unallocated space?

i understand it used the FAT32 instead of the NTFS to format

help!

 

problems with formating external hard drive. Drive shows as unallocated drive.

Hello,

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community.

We regret the inconvenience caused to you. We will assist you with this issue.

Let's try to format the external hard drive from disk management and check if it helps. Follow the steps below:

1. Right click on the Start menu and select Disk management.

2. Right-click on a rectangle that represents unallocated space on a hard drive, and select "New Simple Volume".

Note: that the color code that corresponds to the unallocated space vary in different Windows versions; consult the legend in the bottom of the Disk Management window.

3. Click "Next" and then "Next" again to accept the default size of the new partition.

4. Choose the option "Format the volume (partition) with the default settings" and click "Next."

5. Click "Finish" to create a new partition on the hard drive and format it.

Try the above steps and check if it helps. Let us know the status of the issue. We will be glad to assist you further.

Thank you.

 

unallocated space in G drive (external)

hi

thanks for your response.

(Windows can't format a FAT32 partition to a size greater than 32GB.

You will need to reformat the drive using NTFS to have access to the full capacity.)

can you tell me how to reformat the external drive G: with NTFS?

it seems that is what is needed.

or is your suggestion the same.
formatting and extending capacity achieve the same end