For users who work with both Macs and PCs, having a flash drive that can work between both and seamlessly transport files can be critical. The tricky part is choosing the filesystem that provides. How to format a drive on a Mac Here's how to format a drive using a Mac - including how to format a drive for Windows and Mac so the contents can be read on both platforms, and what format to use.
From this tutorial you will learn how you can quickly do usb formatting and make it functional again for optimal use. USB flash drives are great when it comes to data storage and safe data transfer gadget but sometimes you need to do flash drive formatting to get rid of the viruses that are transferred in your drive. In this tutorial, we will teach you how to format usb in mac. Step # 1-Open the folder First of all, press the “Command + Up + A” key to open the enclosed folder, and move to the USB drive. Here you can see that we have a backup folder stored in the USB.
Step # 2 – Open disk utility Now move on to “spotlight” and type in “application disk utility”. Once the results are shown go to “options” and open up “Disk Utility”. Step # 3 – Click on the “erase” tab In order to do usb formatting, go to your usb drive and move on to the “erase” tab. Here you can see two options below. One is the “erase free space” option while the other is simply the “erase” option.
By securely erasing the free space on your disk drive, chances of the deleted files being recovered are reduced Step # 4 – Click on the “erase” button Since we want to format our usb and erase all the data there, we will simply choose the “erase” option. The processing takes about a few minutes. Step # 5 –View the usb Once done, move back up to the USB drive and you can see that all the data has been erased and this is how you can format usb in mac.
How do I format or convert my USB stick to FAT32 on Mac? ' Hello, I have a 64 GB USB flash drive, storing with 20GB of files. Some programs on my computer only accept FAT32 file system for saving files to an external storage device.
And I want to save those files to the USB flash drive. So here comes the problem that I must format or convert the USB disk first. How to format or convert my USB flash drive to FAT32 on my Mac computer? Does anyone know a solution to this problem?'
According to most solutions provided online, the way to format USB flash drive to FAT32 on Mac computer always results in data loss issue. If you prefer a safe and reliable way to convert your USB flash drive or external hard drive/SD card to FAT32, follow steps on this page to accomplish this task on your own now. Extract/Backup USB data before formatting The best solution to this problem that you may try is to backup or extract existing data from your USB flash drive to another safe storage device in advance. Here you can try these recommended options to extract USB data: Option 1. Drag USB data to another device on Mac.
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Connect USB and another storage device to your Mac computer. Open both USB and another storage device on Mac. Drag files and data from USB to another storage device. Scan and extract all data from USB with Mac data recovery freeware recommended If you prefer a thorough way to extracting all existing and even lost files from your USB to a safe location on Mac, professional - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free for Mac is available to help. This software supports to full scan and find all existing files and lost data on your USB flash drive. You can directly extract all USB data to another location or storage device on Mac in 3 simple steps: Note: If your USB flash drive has more than 2GB files, please activate this free data recovery software into a Pro version so to restore and extract unlimited data from USB drive. Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free and select the location of your USB drive.
Click Next to continue. Let the program scan and find your USB files, including lost data with two scanning modes - Quick Scan/Deep Scan. Preview and choose all found USB files, click Recover to extract and save in a safe device/location on Mac. Format/Convert USB to FAT32 After extracting or backing up USB data to a safety device, you can now try methods in the below to convert USB to FAT32 now: Method 1. Format USB to FAT32 with Disk Utility (Erase all data) To format USB to FAT32 with Disk Utility will erase all data on the flash drive, so before you doing so, please do remember to check whether you have saved useful data to another secure device in advance. Here are the detail tips to format USB to FAT32 now: 1. Connect the USB flash drive to your Mac computer.
2.Go to Applications Utilities Double click and open Disk Utility. Select your USB flash drive on the sidebar, choose Erase.
Rename the USB flash drive, choose the format as MS-DOS (FAT) for Format, Master Boot Record for Scheme. Then click Erase. Wait for the process to complete, then you’ll get an empty new USB flash drive with FAT32 as the file system. You can reuse it for saving data again. Convert/format USB flash drive to FAT32 by using Mac Command Line 1. Connect your USB flash drive to your Mac computer.
Hit cmd + space to run Spotlight, type: terminal and hit Enter. Type:diskutil list and find out which disk is your USB drive. In the below picture, you can see that /dev/disk2 is the USB drive. Type: sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 MBRFormat /dev/disk2. sudo gives you user right.
Diskutil calls disk utility program. eraseDisk commands to format.
FAT32 sets the file system. MBRFormat tells disk utility to format with a Master Boot Record. /dev/disk2 is the location of the USB drive.
Wait for the process to complete and after this, you can type: diskutil list in command again to check if the formatting has been successful. After this, you should be able to use USB with FAT32 file system to save files again.
Question: How to restore lost files after formatting USB to FAT32 on Mac? Some of you may have the same question that if you’ve forgotten to extract files before formatting USB, how can you restore the lost files by formatting USB flash drive? The reason why formatted/erased data on USB or other storage devices on Mac computer can be still restored is that those formatted data are still on the storage devices.
Only the entries got removed, being marked as empty on devices. You can refer to this page: on Mac as a guide with the help of EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard now.