Would a problem of this nature arise if the files (on the external) were created in a fat32 format and now are trying to be transfered to a NTFS file system? truenorth
No. The only problem that might arise is that you cannot create a file larger than (2^32)-1 bytes (this is one byte less than 4 GB) on a FAT32 partition, thus an attempt to copy or move a file larger than this would fail, but we are talking about files going the other way.
The problem, as expressed by the OP, is this:
the computer does not recognise the device when it is plugged in to the computer