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External Hard Drive advice

Anonymous
2024-08-26T19:12:23+00:00

I have used my Samsung M3 external hard drive to save game data for my son on PS4. I now can’t access my other stored files when using the drive on my PC?? Any advice welcome on how to recover the other files thanks.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-08-27T07:10:26+00:00

    Dear Scotciad6!

    Welcome to the Microsoft Community!

    There are a number of reasons why you may not be able to access files on an external hard drive.

    If your hard drive is recognized, but the data cannot be read. Here are some possible reasons and corresponding suggestions:

    Causes:

    Incompatible file system: PS4 uses a dedicated file system. If your hard drive is formatted on PS4, the file format of the hard drive will not be compatible with Windows, and you may not be able to read and access the contents normally.

    Suggested solutions:

    1. Check the file system:
    • Check the file system type. If it says "FAT32" or "exFAT", it can usually be read by Windows.
    • If the file system is "NTFS", it can usually be read on Windows, but the PS4 may not recognize it.
    • If the file system is a PS4-specific format, you may need to use the PS4 to read specific files.
    1. Format the hard drive to exFAT format (if you really need to use it on both PC and PS4, this is the last resort and will delete all data. Please back up your data.):
    • If the above methods do not work and you do not need to keep the data on the hard drive, you can try to format the hard drive to the exFAT file system supported by Windows. This will allow your computer and PS4 to read the contents of the hard drive normally. However, if you use the external data content dedicated to PS4, you may not be able to use it when using PS4, and you are likely to be asked to format it again to the PS4-specific hard drive file format.

    I hope above information can help you. If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. Tell me the results and I will get back to you as soon as possible. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your understanding and support! 

    Best regards

    Yang.Z - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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