Converting or formatting a USB flash drive to fat32

Question

I either need to reformat or convert a flash drive to fat32. I have read numerous articles and most say go to accessories-system tools-disk converter but there is no disk converter is system tools. I also read an article that says to go to a command prompt and type format X: /fat32 where X is the drive letter but that says invalid parameter. Another article says to do to disk management and right click the drive and format and select fat32 but fat32 is not a choice. It used to be easy as you could just tight click the drive in file explorer and select format and select fat32 but for some reason it is no longer a choice.

I would appreciate if someone could tell me how to format my flash drive to fat32 I would very much appreciate it.

Thank you

Answer 1

Hi, I'm Anvar, I'd be glad to help you today on this

If FAT32 option not showing in format , suggest to use diskpart command line tool

kindly fellow below steps

1. Type cmd in windows search ad right cick on it and click run as administrator
2. Next you can type the command diskpart in Command Prompt window. Press Enter to launch DiskPart utility.

Then you can type the command "list disk", press Enter and all detected disks will be displayed with detailed information. Check carefully which disk is your USB drive. You may identify the USB by checking the size. n this example we are assuming it as disk 3

Step 4. Select and clean the target USB drive

Type the command "select disk 3" and press Enter to select the target USB flash drive. Then type "clean" command and press Enter. DiskPart will wipe disk data.

Step 5. Format USB flash drive/pen drive with CMD (Command Prompt)

Tip: Before you format USB using CMD, you can confirm again that you’ve selected the right disk, to avoid formatting the wrong disk. You can type list disk command again, press Enter, and the selected disk should have a “*” mark before the disk number.

After that, you can type the command create partition primary, and press Enter.

Then type the command "format fs=ntfs" or "format fs=fat32", and press Enter to format the USB flash drive to NTFS or FAT32 format. Optionally you can add a “quick” flag after the command for a faster format.

Step 6. Assign a drive letter for the USB

Continue to type the command "assign letter=h", replace “h” with the preferred drive letter you want to assign to the USB drive. Press Enter to assign a letter for the USB drive and make it visible in Windows File Explorer.

Type exit to close DiskPart and type exit to close Command Prompt window.

After formatting the USB flash drive in CMD (Command Prompt), the USB drive should be shown in Windows File Explorer and is available for storing files

Note :_ Exlude quotes while typing commands

(source :- minitool.com)

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Thanks very much for the reply. It sure would be much easier if Microsoft would have simply let fat32 as one of the options when right clicking and selecting format.

Answer 3

Its My pleasure:) , I can understand how you feel, in some cases if the USB drive formatted with a fille system that not supported formatting as Fat32, it may not be showing FAt32 as an option, in such cases Clean command from diskpart will be helpful

Sometimes, you have to format a drive larger than 32 GB to FAT32. However, if you format the drive in File Explorer or Windows Disk Management, the "FAT32 not an option" issue will occur. If you format the drive with Command Prompt, it will tell you it can't format to FAT32 because the volume size is too big.

Answer 4

Well everything seemed to go as it should but as soon as I assigned a drive letter a window popped up and said the drive needed to be formatted, so will go through the procedure again. All commands completed properly so not sure why assigning the drive letter seems to have affected it.

Answer 5

Kindly try below method

type the command "format fs=fat32", and press Enter to format the USB flash drive to FAT32 format., then exit diskpart assign drive letter using disk management tool in windows