Why 1TB WD External Hard Drive Only Shows 32GB Capacity
My friend once used my 1TB WD external hard drive to install Windows. After he was done, I reformatted the drive, but it only shows 32GB capacity now, no matter what I do. There is unused storage on my 1TB WD drive, but what am I supposed to do to extend it to 1TB?
Best Answered by
Oliver· Answered on May 16, 2024
There are many possible reasons why your 1TB WD external hard drive only shows 32GB capacity, such as:
- Your hard drive using FAT32 format
- Inappropriate partitioning
- Corrupted file system
- Bad sectors existence
To allow your WD external hard drive to show its real capacity, you can first check if it's formatted as FAT32.
Step 1. Right-click on the Windows menu icon and open Disk Management.
Step 2. Find your WD drive partition and check its format.
If it shows FAT32, you can format it to NTFS to fix the issue. However, general formatting can cause data loss on the hard drive. If you don't want this situation to occur, use EaseUS Partition Master Free's advanced feature "FAT to NTFS."
This feature allows you to complete FAT32 to NTFS conversion without losing data on your disk. You can follow the steps here:
Step 1. Connect the WD external hard drive to your PC and open EaseUS Partition Master.
Step 2. Right-click on the partition of your WD disk and select "Advanced" > "FAT to NTFS."
Step 3. Confirm the pop-up message and execute the task.
After this, you can go back to Disk Management, right-click on the WD disk partition, and choose "Extend Volume" to use its full capacity.
If the WD drive still shows 32GB after you try the method above, use EaseUS Partition Master's "Check File System" and "Surface Test" to check and repair disk partition errors on the drive.
Further reading: Fixes for (External) Hard Drive Shows Wrong Capacity
