How to Free Create FAT32 Partition on External Hard Drive in Windows

Question: To make my 1TB Toshiba USB external HDD work on Xbox to play music, movie, or something else, I need to recreate a FAT32 partition as the first partition of external hard drive. Nevertheless, when connecting the hard drive with my Windows XP computer and opening Disk Management, I found there is no unallocated space for me to create such a partition. My question is how to create FAT32 partition on external hard drive in Windows XP when there is no unallocated space available.

Answer: As Windows XP Disk Management and Diskpart do not offer a feature to create unallocated space via shrinking a volume, users need the help of third party partition manager. Actually, even in Windows operating systems where Shrink Volume has been contained, like Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8, unallocated space shrunk from the first partition can not be located before the source partition. That is to say users still can not create a FAT32 partition as the first partition. Therefore, third party partitioning software is quite necessary under this kind of situations. Well then, how to create FAT32 partition on external hard drive with third party software? Firstly, we need to download such a program. Here, MiniTool Partition Wizard is recommended for it can complete this operation with ease.

How to Create FAT32 Partition on External Hard Drive with MiniTool Partition Wizard

1. Launch the partition manager to get its main interface shown below:



2. Since we need to create a FAT32 partition as the first partition, we should shrink the original first partition and make the unallocated space on the left. Select partition H and choose the function "Move/Resize Partition" from action panel.



3. Drag the left border of partition handle rightwards to shrink partition so as to make the unallocated space on the left, and then click "OK" to go back to the main interface: how-to-create-fat32-partition-on-external-hard-drive-create-partition



4. Select the newly created unallocated space and choose "Create Partition" from the left to get the following interface:



5. Set attributes for this partition and click "OK" to get the main interface again:



6. Now we can see a new FAT32 partition appeared at the first place, but it has not been applied to computer. Please click "Apply" to apply changes.

After these 6 steps, the problem how to create FAT32 partition on external hard drive is solved. If your PS3 or Xbox can not read an external device, check whether the first partition is FAT32. If not, create a new FAT32 partition as the first partition or directly convert the first partition to FAT32 with MiniTool Partition Wizard. See Convert NTFS to FAT.