Right click on the flash drive and click on Format option. This opens a new window, where you can set File system, Allocation unit size, and change Volume label for the USB drive. Once all options are set, proceed to format the USB drive. This is one of the quickest USB flash drive format tool for Windows. Note: exFAT format USB flash drives do not work with ClonerAlliance products. Click a format option (FAT32 or NTFS). If you’ve formatted your drive before and you’re positive that it isn’t broken, you can also check the Quick Format box. Click Start, and then click OK. Format USB Drive in Mac If you want to use the USB drive on your Mac computer only, formatting it to be entirely Mac compatible file system is highly recommended, such as HFS+ file system. If you want to use the drive between a Windows and Mac machine, you can format it to FAT32. After choosing your drive, click on the 'Erase' button on the top menu bar. You will see a popup window, in that window, give the name to your drive and select a format for your USB drive. Once done, click on the 'Erase' button. This will format Write Protected USB drive on Mac using Disk Utility.

Disk Utility User Guide

In Disk Utility on Mac, you can erase and reformat storage devices to use with your Mac. Erasing a storage device deletes everything on it.

1. If you have any files you want to save, copy them to another storage device.

2. Open the Disk Utility app on your Mac using one of the following methods, depending on the type of disk or volume you want to erase:

   • If you want to erase your startup disk: Start up from macOS Recovery, then choose Disk Utility from the Recovery window.

   • If you want to erase any other type of storage device: Double-click Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities folder.

3. Choose View > Show All Devices.

4. In the sidebar, select the storage device you want to erase, then click the Erase button .

5. Click the Scheme pop-up menu, then choose GUID Partition Map.

6. Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose a file system format.

7. Enter a name.

8. (Optional) If available, click Security Options, use the slider to choose how many times to write over the erased data, then click OK.

   Secure erase options are available only for some types of storage devices. If the Security Options button is not available, Disk Utility cannot perform a secure erase on the storage device.

9. Click Erase, then click Done.

Note: With a solid-state drive (SSD), secure erase options are not available in Disk Utility. For more security, consider turning on FileVault encryption when you start using your SSD drive.

For Apple Mac users, there are two ways to format USB flash drive to FAT32, including Disk Utility and Terminal command line. Refer to detailed steps of using both tools for FAT32 format. Formatting would erase data completely, make sure that you have a data backup. Otherwise, you can use data recovery software to recover data from a formatted USB drive.

Are you looking for a secure way to format USB to FAT32 on Mac? You are at the right place. Follow here, you can find two methods that will assist you in doing so on your storage device. And if you lost data during the formatting, reliable Mac file recovery software is ready to help anytime:

How to Format a USB Flash Drive with Mac to FAT32

Computer users who use a USB might have the demand for formatting it to the FAT32 file system. Compare with the other commonly used NTFS file system on a flash drive, FAT32 has a compatibility advantage across many operating systems.

It's a universal format that is compatible with Mac OS X/macOS, Windows, Linux, and DOS systems. So, if users anticipate using the flash drive with more than one operating system, they will definitely benefit from the FAT32 file system. For Apple Mac users, there are two ways to format a USB flash drive to FAT32, namely Disk Utility and Terminal command line. Below are the detailed steps of the FAT32 format with both methods.

Method 1. Format FAT32 on Mac [Disk Utility]

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.

To format the USB drive to FAT32, follow the next steps:

Step 1. Connect the USB flash drive to your Mac computer.

Step 2. Go to Applications >Utilities > Double click and open Disk Utility.

Step 3. Select your USB flash drive on the sidebar, choose Erase.

How To Format Thumb Drive For Both Mac And Windows

Step 4. Rename the USB flash drive (optional).

Step 5. 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 use it for saving data again.

Method 2. Format FAT32 on Mac [Terminal Command Line]

The command-line behavior does the same way to erase data with the Disk Utility. Again, create a backup before taking this action.

To format FAT32 on Mac with Terminal, follow the next steps:

Step 1. Connect the USB flash drive to your Mac computer.

Step 2. Hit cmd + space to run Spotlight, type: terminal, and hit Enter.

Step 3. Type: diskutil list and find out which disk is your USB drive.

Step 4. 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. After this, you can type 'diskutil list' in the command again to check if the formatting has been successful.

Bonus Tip: How to Recover Data from Formatted USB

Formatting the USB would erase the data on it completely, so please make sure that you have a backup. If you don't, you can count on data recovery software to retrieve the lost data.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard has both Windows and Mac versions, so it's a good choice for data recovery, no matter you're using a PC or Mac. For Mac users, it only takes a few clicks for the software to scan and display the formatted data. To guarantee an effective data recovery without spending money to no avail, you can install the Mac data recovery free version for the first trial. You can preview all the found data before the final recovery.

To recover data from a formatted USB flash drive on Mac, follow the next steps:

Step 1. Correctly connect your USB flash drive to your Mac. Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac. Start selecting the flash drive and click 'Scan' to let the software search lost files on it.

Step 2. After a quick scan and deep scan, all files will be presented in the left panel in the scan results.

How To Format Flash Drive For Mac And Windows Using Mac

Step 3. Select files you want to recover and click the 'Recover Now' button. Don't save the recoverable files to the USB drive itself in case of data overwriting.