Use PowerShell to format a drive in FAT32 You have successfully formatted the drive in FAT32 file system format. After successfully formatting, you will receive a “Format complete” message. Once the FAT32 formatting is complete, you will be asked to enter a drive name. Depending on the drive’s size, the formatting process can take some time.ĥ. Don’t forget to replace “Drive_Letter” with the actual drive letter. In the Command Prompt window, execute the below command. Alternatively, you can also use the run command cmd.ģ. Once you have the drive letter, open Command Prompt from the Start menu. We are going to need it in the next step.Ģ.

In File Explorer, identify your USB drive and note down the drive letter. First, plug in the USB drive-next, open File Explorer. Once you have the drive letter, we can use it to format the drive in FAT32.ġ. This is because we need the drive letter to target the drive. Since we are using the Command Prompt, you need to know the drive letter of the USB drive before formatting it. You can format large drives in FAT32 format with a single-line command in the Command Prompt. Third-party software Command to format a drive in FAT32.In some cases older machines and third party hardware can't read the exFAT format, then you will need to format FAT in Windows instead, which it will give it a Master Boot Record for a Partition table. The best way to format a external drive for use between Windows and Mac's is to:Ģ: Take the drive to the oldest Windows PC and right click format: exFAT (do not format exFAT on the Mac it does it wrong)ĮxFAT is cross compatable, can handle larger than 4GB sized files.Ī free exFAT download for Windows XP is available from Microsoft if it's not installed. Some partition formats and partition tables can't work well with other operating systems. On Mac's it's a different story, one has to choose both a partition table AND a format for the partitions.ĭrives with no partitions actually have one partition on the drive, it just takes up most of the remaining space on the drive.

On Windows it's easy to format drives, just right click and choose a format, Windows automatically decides a partition table. When formatting a drive, one must remember there are two parts.ġ: The Partition Table or map - which is the instructions for hardware what partitions etc., are on the drive.Ģ: The partitions themselves and their format.

Fat32 reader for mac