Why Do You Format USB Flash Drive
- Find out how to format an External drive or USB disk making the drive work with both Windows PC and Mac can read and write. You will learn the easiest way to format drive on Mac and Windows as exFAT.
- How to Format a Flash Drive. This wikiHow teaches you how to change your flash drive's default file format. Formatting your flash drive will typically remove any files or folders on the drive, so make sure you back up your files before.
- Part 1: How to Format a USB Flash Drive on Mac Connect the USB drive; Switch on your Mac and connect the USB drive using one of the USB ports. Ensure that the USB is properly connected. Choose Utilities; Now launch the application program and click on the Utilities option on the right side window.
The storage devices that are widely used nowadays are typically HDDs and SSDs, which are always set up on a PC/Mac to install the operating system and store data files. Meanwhile, there are many other types of prevailing devices with more flexible features for different purposes. Yes, they are removable storage devices such as USB flash drive. The truth is that no matter what drive you're using, it must have a valid file system so that Windows can recognize it and put it to use.
Select the USB flash drive in Disk Utility. Click the 'Partition' tab, if you want to use more than one partition in the drive. A drive with two partitions, for example can have one partitioned in ExFAT and another in a Mac OS Extended format, so you can use the same drive on a Mac and a Windows computer. Select a format for each partition.
What's more, it's inevitable to develop bad sectors or corruption issues on a specified flash drive after a long-time use. By formatting, you can easily fix any USB flash drive, pen drive or memory stick that is write protected, virus infected, corrupted, damaged, unreadable, unrecognized by PC and Mobile. Best free antivirus for mac.
So here comes the question, how to format a USB flash drive? This page mainly illustrates how to format a USB flash drive using Windows inbuilt Command Prompt, and the following is the detailed guide you should strictly follow.
How to Format USB Flash Drive from Command Prompt
For your information, any form of disk formatting will completely erase data, so backup as many as important files before the start. Altogether, you'll walk through the whole formatting process in eight steps, and the time spent will depend on the USB flash drive capacity and used space on it. (The following steps are performed on Windows 10 PC.)
Step 1: Type cmd in the search box, then you can get the best match called Command Prompt. Right-click on it and choose 'Run as administrator'.
Step 2: On the Command Prompt window, type diskpart and press 'Enter'.
Step 3: Type list disk and press 'Enter'. According to the list disk information, check which disk is your USB flash drive. For example, disk 2.
Step 4: Now type select disk 2 and press 'Enter'.
Step 5: Type clean. Wait some time for disk erasing.
Step 6: Type create partition primary and press 'Enter'.
Step 7: After diskpart successfully created the specified partition, type format fs=ntfs and press 'Enter'. If you prefer other file system formats, change the command ntfs to the desired one such as fat32, exfat, etc.
Step 8: Type assign to create a drive letter to the flash drive.
# Advantages of using cmd
As you know, there is more than one way to perform a formatting task in Windows OS, but why would we recommend you such a complicated approach? It's the most helpful and powerful!
In some cases, you can only use the diskpart command to format a USB flash drive or hard drive. For example:
- The formatting doesn't complete successfully
- Raw drive cannot be fixed and formatted using Disk Management
# Errors you may encounter while using diskpart
- Diskpart format fs=ntfs stuck at 0, 10, 11, 12..completed
Will You Prefer USB Format Tool
Viewing from the noticeable advantages of using cmd to format USB flash drive, we think that you might be interested in an easier way of disk & partition formatting. It's a third-party free partition manager, which is recognized as the best USB format tool. Try it once and you will definitely like it.
Step 1: Launch EaseUS Partition Master, right-click the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and choose the 'Format' option.
Step 2: Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.
Step 3: In the Warning window, click 'OK' to continue.
Step 4: Click the 'Execute Operation' button in the top-left corner to review the changes, then click 'Apply' to start formatting your external hard drive/USB/SD card.
Usb format for mac and windows. You can use any USB flash drive on a Mac computer provided that it has been formatted. Most flash drives are preformatted by the manufacturer and are ready to use upon purchase. If you have an old flash drive or one that was formatted to work with Windows or another operating system, you can still format your flash drive to work on a Mac.
Volume Format
Most manufacturers use the FAT 32 or MS-DOS (FAT) volume format. These are Windows volume formats, but they can be read by Mac OS X. If your flash drive states that it was formatted with one of these volume types, you should be able to plug it into your Mac and use it without a problem. If you plug in your drive and your Mac won't read it, you need to format it. The sims 3 for mac free.
Formatting
To format a flash drive on a Mac, plug in the drive and open the 'Applications' folder, the 'Utilities' folder and then 'Disk Utility.' Your flash drive should be listed in the left menu. Select the drive, and then click 'Erase.' When you see the volume format types listed, choose 'MS-DOS (FAT).' Some older flash drives may only have the options 'FAT 16' or 'FAT 32.' Choose the highest number available if 'MS-DOS (FAT)' doesn't appear.
Warning
Formatting a flash drive erases all data currently stored on it. If you have already saved anything on the drive, back up the data before you format the flash drive. To back up your data, insert the USB drive into the computer you used with the drive and copy the contents of the drive to the desktop or a folder on the computer. To copy, just drag and drop the files from the flash drive menu to the desktop or desired folder.
![Format Flash Drive For Mac Format Flash Drive For Mac](/uploads/1/3/4/3/134338907/403181501.jpg)
Faulty Drives
Occasionally, a faulty flash drive becomes unreadable after it's been used for a while. If you have an older USB flash drive that's been beaten around, it may not work even if you reformat it. While most flash drives are made to withstand years of use, take the age and previous use of the drive into consideration if you have a flash drive that can't be read anymore.
References
About the Author
Aubrey Kerr is a writer and photographer. With a B.A. in media arts and public relations, she has helped small business owners design and implement online marketing campaigns since 2004. Her work appears on several websites including Salon.com and the Houston Chronicle.
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Format External Hard Drive Mac
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