How to Format a USB Drive to FAT32 on Windows 11 or Windows 10
Formatting your USB flash drive using the FAT32 file system is as easy as selecting a few options or running a command on your Windows 11 or Windows 10 PC. We’ll show you both ways to accomplish the task, so your drive is formatted in your preferred format.
! Warning: Formatting your drive with any file system erases all the data stored on the drive. Make sure you’ve backed up your important files before proceeding to reformatting your drive.
Should You Format Your USB Flash Drive With FAT32?
There are many reasons to format your drive in FAT32 format. The most common one is that your drive will work with many more devices than if it was formatted in another file format, say NTFS. Nearly all the devices support FAT32. A good example here is that you can add data to your drive from your Mac machine if your drive was formatted in FAT32. You can’t do that with an NTFS-formatted drive.
While there are pros to using the FAT32 format, a few cons exist as well. You can’t store an individual file larger than 4 GB on a FAT32-formatted drive. Also, the built-in graphical formatting options on Windows only let you format your drives in FAT32 if they’re 32 GB or less in storage capacity. (However, there’s a command-line method and a third-party app to format drives larger than 32 GB in FAT32 format.)
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