The building of a large-scale exteal-target experiment, abbreviated as CEE, in the cooling storage ring at the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou has been planned. The CEE is a multi-purpose spectrometer that will be used for various studies on heavy-ion collisions. A multi-wire drift chamber (MWDC) array is the forward tracking detector of the CEE. In this work, GEANT4 simulations were performed for the MWDC forward tracking array with a focus on the track reconstruction algorithm. Combined with the time of flight information, particle identification is achieved. The residue is about 30μm, while the tracking efficiency is higher than 90％with the current redundancy. In addition, a prototype of the forward tracking system using three MWDCs was assem-bled and tested using a high-energy proton beam. The firing efficiency of the detector and the reconstruction accuracy of the prototype were derived. The track residue for the protons at about 400 MeV/c is better than 300μm, meeting the requirements of the CEE. Suggestions for improving the performance of the forward tracking system are given.