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Cannot format USB or external hard drive to FAT32 in Windows 10
Mostly, people would like to format a USB flash drive or external hard drive to NTFS. But sometimes, you may want to format a USB flash drive or external hard drive to FAT32 in Windows 10 for some reasons, like making the USB or external hard drive faster when writing mostly large files to it or ensuring the compatibility with non-Windows operating systems.
Jun 25, 2018 - Formatting a USB flash drive is a straight-forward job in Windows operating system. In the File Explorer, right-click on the USB drive, click. ExFAT format in Windows 10. When you format a partition or drive in Windows 10, there are three types of file system you won’t be unfamiliar, NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT. NTFS, a modern file system, is used in system drive by default due to its advanced features what benefit system running.
But the problem is that the max partition size of FAT32 is 32GB, which means you can only format devices smaller than 32GB into this file system. From the chart below, you'll have a better understanding of why you can't format USB or external hard drive (more than 32GB) to FAT32:
Windows 10 Disk Management tool also can't do this on a USB drive or hard drive which is bigger than 32GB. Fortunately, this page will show you how to do it by using CMD command line and professional Windows 10 FAT 32 format tool.
- Notice:
- Formatting a USB drive or external hard drive will remove all existing files on the device. Please make sure you have backed up files before formatting to avoid further data loss.
Format to FAT32 using CMD command line (Free)
A simple and free way to format your flash drive or external hard drive to FAT32 in Windows 10 is using CMD command line. It's a built-in tool in Windows, enabling you to format, create, delete, extend, and shrink partitions without rebooting the system.
Please be careful while using CMD for FAT32 formatting with the following steps:
Step 1: Type command prompt in Windows 10 search bar or right-click on 'Windows icon' > select 'Search', and type cmd.
Step 2: Right-click on 'Command Prompt' and select 'Run as Administrator'.
Step 3: Type the command format fs=fat32 quick at the prompt and hit 'Enter'.
Windows 10 will begin formatting the USB flash drive or external hard drive into FAT32.
Step 4: Type exit when the process has completed.
Use EaseUS Windows 10 FAT32 formatting tool (Easier & Safer)
If you prefer a safer and easier way to format your USB flash drive or external hard drive to FAT32, you can try a professional third-party Windows 10 FAT32 formatting tool. We recommend you try EaseUS partition manager with its Format partition feature. Now, download and install this tool on your computer, then follow the steps to get things done.
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.
Smaller cluster size makes less wasting of disk space. The smaller the cluster size is, the bigger file allocation table (FAT) will be. The bigger the FAT is, the slower the operating system works with the disk.
Final Word
This page tells how to format a USB or external hard drive into FAT32, which is especially helpful in formatting devices bigger than 32GB into FAT32 without data loss. If you want to convert devices into NTFS without formatting, please refer to How to Convert FAT to NTFS for help.
Windows 10 is set to be released later this month. The OS will be available on flash drives, however, if you want to create your own bootable USB drive for Windows 10, you can do that pretty easily. Here’s how to:
The easy way to create a bootable USB drive for Windows 10
There’s always an “easy way” to do things on Windows using some kind of software. Creating a bootable USB drive is also pretty easy – here’s how to do it:
- Click and Open rufus.exe
- Once the user interface of the software opens up, plug-in your USB
- After that, look for the “Create a bootable USB drive option” and from the drop-down, select an ISO Image
- Then, click on the button next to the dropdown and select the Windows 10 ISO that you want to install
- Lastly, click on “Start” and wait for the software to create the bootable USB drive.
That’s pretty much it. You now have a bootable USB drive, just plug it in your device and make sure your BIOS is all setup and you should now be able to easily install Windows 10 using the bootable USB drive that you just created.
The hard way
If you don’t want to use any software, there’s another way of creating a bootable USB drive, but that’s a bit trickier. Here’s how to do it:
- First, make sure your USB drive is plugged in
- Search and open Command Prompt as an administrator
- Next, you’ll have to open the disk management utility using CMD (Command Prompt) – to do that, type in diskpart and hit enter
- After that, you will have to display the connected disks that are available – to do that, type in list disk and hit enter
- Then, you’ll need to select your USB drive – to do that, type select disk # and hit enter – you’ll have to replace the # with your disk number
- Next, you’ll have to clean the USB drive – to do that, type clean and hit enter
- Then you’ll need to create a bootable partition – type in create partition primary and hit enter
- You will now need to select the partition that you just created. To do that, type in select partition 1.
- After that, type active and hit enter
- Next, you’ll need to format the USB drive – just type in format fs=fat32 and hit enter
- You’ll now need to assign your USB drive a letter, to do that, just type in assign
- Lastly, copy all the Windows 10 files and paste it inside the USB drive. (You can copy the files by extracting an ISO or copy it from a Windows 10 disk).
That’s it! You have just manually created a Windows 10 bootable USB drive and it’s ready to install Windows 10 on your device.
Creating a bootable USB drive is pretty easy, to be honest. I’d recommend following the easy way of creating the bootable USB drive if you’re not an expert – however, if you’re an expert, just follow the hard way of creating the bootable USB drive and avoid using any type of software.