1. Format Usb Fat32 On Mac
2. Fat32 Formatter For Mac
3. Fat32 Formatter For Mac Download

To Format SD card to FAT32 in Mac OS, follow below instructions: 1. Connect the SD card to the Mac OS X computer. Search for Disk Utility in Launchpad and open it. Select the Drive and click Erase. Enter the new name (OPTIONAL). Select MS-DOS(FAT) for Format. Select Master Boot Record for Scheme. Performing FAT32 Format of SD Card on Mac. To ensure that your update will go smoothly, we recommend you to do a FAT32 format on your SD card before putting the update file inside. If your SD card has already been FAT32 formatted before, there is no need to do again. To do FAT32 format on a Mac, please follow these simple steps.

When we want to format a volume that is larger than 32GB, Windows default format option in the File Explorer right-click context won’t list FAT32 in the drop-down menu of the ‘File system’ nor in Disk Management, you’ll only see NTFS and exFAT(default), but how can we create a FAT32 volume on a 64GB or larger USB Drive?

Why would we insist on FAT32 partition anyway?

Check the table below：

FAT32 is supported by every OS and Game console, NTFS is read only on macOS, exFAT is acceptable by modern OS but with conditions as for me, FAT32 is for the USB drive to transfer data between my PC and Mac, and the drive is 64GB, I’ll use the alternative ways of creating a FAT32 volume

1. PowerShell format to large FAT32 partition

We can using the following steps to create a partition with FAT32 file system which is large than 32GB in size:

1. Right-click the Start button on Windows 10, or press Win+X instead
2. Click the Windows PowerShell (Admin) option
3. Click Yes to the UAC (User Account Control) dialog
4. Type the command: format /fs:fat32 x: to format (replace X with the the real drive letter you’d like to format)
5. Type Y to confirm the warning

(takes 1 min from 0% to 1%)

Parallels desktop business edition 15.1.2.47123 cr2. If you don’t know which drive letter is, use the following commands to check and format in PowerShell:

1. diskpart
2. list volume
3. select volume X
4. format fs=fat32

Then PowerShell will start to format this volume, but this operation is buggie, I closed out the PowerShell window after typing those commands, but when I open Disk Management, it is still formatting, when I right-click on this volume and click Cancel format, guess what? nothing happened, the format process continued, and it does take me 5 minutes to reach 10%, and howtogeek shared his time on this operation: almost one hour on 64GB FAT32 formatting, also many other users had reported that this method is super slow on larger drives, Do we have a faster alternative?

Yes, read on

Side note: Don’t close Disk Management when it’s formatting a volume, or next time it will hang when you re-open it, and after it reaches 100%, the partition will become RAW

So don’t close the PowerShell or CMD tool when formatting, if you do have to cancel it, press Ctrl+C

2. Third party FAT32 format tool

PowerShell and diskpart performance slow when formatting to FAT32, we don’t have to wait that long to get a large FAT32 partition ready, alternatively, we can use other third party FAT32 format tool to save us a lot of time, the tool I’m about to use is Partition Expert Free Edition (freeware and portable), download this partition manager and we’ll start with the following step:

1. Run Partition Expert directly from the portable package and click Yes to the UAC dialog
2. Right-click on the partition you’d like to format and choose Format Volume
3. In the format window choose FAT32 from the drop down list of ‘File System’
4. Click OK and Commit

If the USB drive you connected shows as ‘unallocated space’, you can create a large FAT32 partition directly in Partition Expert, to do so please follow these step:

1. Click on the unallocated space and choose Create Volume
2. In the create volume window choose FAT32 from the file system section (NTFS, FAT16 and FAT32 are available)
3. Then click OK and Commit this operation in the main window

This alternative method is faster than the built-in tools, it formats to FAT32 partition within seconds

3. Convert NTFS to FAT32 without data loss

Sometimes the USB Drive is NTFS formatted and we have stored data on it, we can of course copy data to other volume first and format the drive to FAT32, and then restore data back to the drive, that is OK when you don’t have much files on the drive, but the copy out and copy in process will take much time when the drive is fulled with data or almost full

Format Usb Fat32 On Mac

Instead, we can directly convert the NTFS drive to FAT32 without data loss in Partition Expert or our freeware NTFS to FAT32 Converter, click on the link to learn more and download

How to convert NTFS to FAT32 in Partition Expert:

1. Right-click on the target NTFS partition and choose Convert to FAT32
2. Click OK to confirm and Commit this conversion in the main window

This operation is fast too, it converts the files system in seconds, you see the screenshot above, it take less than a second to reach 95%, that also the time I press the Win+Shift+S shortcut to take the screenshot in Windows 10.

Now let’s run PowerShell again to check if we have the partition created/converted

Nowadays, when you buy a USB drive, you can use it right out of the box with your Mac. However, unless it’s been designed for use with a Mac, it won’t be formatted using macOS’ preferred file system (either Mac OS Extended or APFS, depending on which version of macOS you’re running).

That’s because most of the computers in the world run Windows, and Windows uses a different file system, usually one known as Fat32. Drives formatted as Fat32 can be read from and written to by macOS, but it’s not optimal and you’re more likely to run into problems than if you use macOS’ native format. So, if you’ve bought a USB drive that’s formatted as Fat32, or any other format other than Mac OS Extended (also known as HFS+) or APFS, here’s how to format a USB drive on Mac. It’s exactly the same procedure if you need to reformat a flash drive on a Mac.

How to format a USB drive on a Mac

1. Plug the drive into a USB socket (if you have a recent MacBook or MacBook Pro that only has USB-C connectors, you’ll need a USB-C to USB-A adaptor).

2. Open a new Finder window and click on the drive. Make sure it has no files on it that you need. The process of reformatting it will wipe all the data from it.

3. Once you’ve copied any files you need from the USB drive to your Mac, go to Applications>Utilities and double-click on Disk Utility.

4. Click on the USB drive in the sidebar and then choose Erase from the toolbar at the top of the window.

5. In the window that drops down type a name for the formatted drive in the box next to Name.

6. Choose a format from the dropdown menu.

7. If you have previously stored sensitive data on the drive, click the Security tab.

8. Choose a security level using the slider. The further to the right you move the slider, the more ‘passes’ the erase tool will make and the more securely files will be deleted. However, it also increases the time it takes to format the drive quite considerably.

9. Click Ok then click Erase.

Tip: You don’t need to erase a whole drive to delete files securely. If you have confidential files or sensitive data you need to remove from your Mac completely, you should use CleanMyMac’s File Shredder. It’s specifically designed to securely delete sensitive data and will render it unrecoverable. You can download CleanMyMac X for free here.

Which format to choose?

If your Mac is running macOS High Sierra or later, you have two options for file formats: APFS and Mac OS Extended. Which should you choose? The key point is that disks formatted as APFS won’t be recognized by Macs running versions of macOS older than High Sierra. So if you think you might need to plug the USB drive into a Mac running an older version of macOS, format it as Mac OS Extended.

APFS is optimized for SSD (solid state drive) such as flash drives, so if you reformat a flash drive on a Mac, you should definitely choose APFS (unless you plan to use it with a pre-High Sierra Mac, of course). Even on hard drives, however, APFS is faster and more reliable than Mac OS Extended.

Finally, if you plan to use the USB drive as a destination for Time Machine backups, choose Mac OS Extended. Time Machine can’t currently back up to an APFS disk and if you select one for use with Time Machine, it will offer to reformat it as Mac OS Extended. You can, however, backup an APFS formatted disk to a Mac OS Extended Time Machine drive.

How to format a USB drive to FAT32 on a Mac

The main reason for formatting a USB drive as Fat32 on a Mac is that you want to be able to use the drive on a Windows PC, as well as a Mac — perhaps to transfer files between the two machines. You may also be preparing the drive for use as, say, a storage device for a media player or to record TV programmes on a TV with a USB port.

The fact that Fat32 can be read from and written to on both Mac and Windows makes it very versatile. However, there is a significant limitation — individual files have a maximum size of 4GB. So, if you’re using the USB drive to store large video files, you may run into trouble. There is a solution, however, exFAT. Unlike FAT32, exFAT doesn’t have a maximum file limit. Better still, it can be read from and written to on any Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or later and on Windows.

To format a USB drive in FAT32 or exFAT:

1. Plug the USB drive into your Mac.

Fat32 Formatter For Mac

2. Go to Applications>Utilities and launch Disk Utility.

3. Click on the USB drive in the sidebar in Disk Utility.

4. Click Erase in the Disk Utility toolbar.

5. Type in a name for the formatted disk.

6. Click on the Format menu and choose either MS-DOS (FAT32) or ExFAT.

7. Click Erase.

Your USB drive will now be erased and re-formatted as either FAT32 or ExFAT, depending on the format you chose in step 6.

Fat32 Formatter For Mac Download

How to manage your drives easily

If you look for a quick and easy way to manage your drives, try using CleanMyDrive 2. With its help, you can drag-and-drop files directly to any drive, clean hidden junk from external drives, and check disk stats. It works for all drives, including USB drives, SSD, SD cards, external hard drives. All the drives will be at hand in the menu bar, so you can get to see types of drives you have and manage them easily. CleanMyDrive is absolutely free to use, so download it on the Mac App Store and enjoy!

It’s very easy to format a USB drive on a Mac using Disk Utility. There are a couple of things you should keep in mind, however. The first is that when you format and disk, you will erase all the data currently on it. So if you need that data, make sure you copy it onto another disk before you start. Secondly, there are several formats to choose from, each with advantages and disadvantage. Use the guide above to help you decide which is right for you.

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