Here in this guide, I present the way to format a USB drive to use the FAT32 file system. Here we mention the alternative ways of formatting FAT32 using either GUI or command line interfaces for both Windows and Linux.
Table of Contents
Windows FAT32 Format
Windows have an odd limitation of 32GB on USB drives when formatting FAT32.
- In case you have a USB that has less than 32GB of capacity, then you can right-click on the USB and format it by using the GUI.
- In case the USB drive has more than 32GB capacity, then you need to use Powershell or some other third-party application to format FAT32. [1]
- As a side note, formatting using Powershell takes a long time.
- It took me 5 minutes to progress 5% of the format.
format /FS:FAT32 H:
Linux FAT32 Format
Format FAT32 Using GUI
1- Open Disks Utility Software
2- Format USB Partition
3- Configure Format As FAT
Using FAT32 Using CMD
References
[1] W. Glenn, “How to Format USB Drives Larger Than 32GB With FAT32 on Windows,” How-To Geek, Jul. 20, 2017. https://www.howtogeek.com/316977/how-to-format-usb-drives-larger-than-32gb-with-fat32-on-windows/ (accessed Sep. 12, 2022).
[2] schkn, “How To Format Disk Partitions on Linux,” devconnected, Oct. 28, 2019. https://devconnected.com/how-to-format-disk-partitions-on-linux/ (accessed Sep. 12, 2022).
[3] “How to Format USB Drives in Linux {3 Methods Explained},” Knowledge Base by phoenixNAP, Nov. 19, 2020. https://phoenixnap.com/kb/linux-format-usb (accessed Sep. 12, 2022).