Fat32 Format Tool For Mac
Win 10 has removed the option to format external drives to FAT32 for whatever reason (maybe they want the users to move to Mac OS or Linux?), but there's help. 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. FAT32's release overcame the 2 GB size limit of FAT16 by increasing the cluster size and setting it to 4 GB. As for operating systems, Windows XP is the last of them to support the FAT32 file system. You can format USB drives larger than 32GB with FAT32 by using the format command in PowerShell or Command Prompt—the command uses the same syntax in both tools. The downside to doing this is that it can take a long time.
It's no surprise that PCs and Macs do not work well with each other, due to differences between the two operating systems (Windows vs macOS). One main difference is file system.
By default, Macs are with HFS+ (since 2017 there's new Apple File System,, optimized for flash storage), while PCs are with NTFS. If you have a USB drive, and you plan to use it on both a Mac and PC, things can get a bit tricky here. What do I mean?
Fat32 Format Program Mac
If your disk was initially formatted to NTFS on a PC (or HFS+ on a Mac), most likely you'll suffer limitations, for example, the data on your drive can't be read or written on one of your computers. Fortunately, there is a file system (actually two, I'll explain) that you can format your flash drive in order to be fully compatible with Mac and PC. In other words, you can access the drive and transfer data without any hassles.
Fat32 Formatting Tool
That file system is — exFAT. Note that there is another file system called FAT32 that pretty much does the same thing but with one major flaw. See the table below for more info. Compatible with macOS? Compatible with Windows? File size Max. Partition size HFS+ Yes No No limit No limit NTFS Partially Yes No limit No limit FAT32 Yes Yes 4GB 8GB exFAT Yes Yes No limit No limit As you can see, exFAT is the only file system that works with all versions of Windows and macOS and does not have any max file-size or partition-size limits.
Smartdisk Fat32 Format Utility For Mac
Therefore, it's perfect for a USB flash drive or external disk especially you need to save files more than 4GB in size. You should go ahead and format your storage drive with exFAT instead of FAT32, assuming that all devices you want to use the drive support exFAT. You may notice that in NTFS is marked 'Partially' under the Compatible with macOS column. This is because an NTFS-based drive can be read by Macs but you can't write data to the drive. Now that you've learned exFAT is the ideal file system to go.
