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Sep 1, 2023 · Formatting the drive can take about an hour, depending on the drive's size and speed. 2. Find the drive letter of the external hard drive. To format the drive, you'll need to know which letter represents it on your PC. Here's how: Press Windows key + E to open File Explorer. Double-click This PC in the left panel.
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- Windows (Drives 32 GB and Smaller): Back up anything on the drive you want to save. If the drive has already seen some use, you'll want to back up any data on it that you want to keep. Formatting the drive will erase all of the data on it.
- Windows (Drives Larger than 32 GB): Download fat32format. This is a free utility that can format any drive up to 2 TB in size with the FAT32 format. You can download it from ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm.
- Mac: Back up any important data from the drive. Formatting the drive will erase everything on it, so make sure any important files are safely copied to another location before proceeding.
- Ubuntu Linux: Back up any data that you would like to save. Formatting your drive will erase all of the data on it. Copy everything you want to save off of the USB drive before formatting.
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How to format a USB drive in FAT32?
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Oct 17, 2023 · You can format USB drives larger than 32GB with FAT32 by using the format command in Teriminal, 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.
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Jul 6, 2023 · To format your USB flash drive to FAT32 format, open File Explorer or Disk Management, right-click your drive, choose "Format," select "FAT32" from "File System," and choose "Start" or "OK." To do that from Command Prompt or PowerShell, run the "format /FS:FAT32 X:" command replacing "X" with your drive letter.
Jun 30, 2021 · Updated Jun 30, 2021. FAT and FAT32 formats support up to 16TB, but Windows sets a 32GB limit! Learn how to format larger drives with FAT or FAT32. Image Credit: nipastock/Shutterstock. Windows doesn't make it easy to format a partition larger than 32 GB with the FAT32 file system.
Mar 11, 2023 · Frequently Asked Questions. What to Know. File Explorer: Go to File Explorer > This PC > right-click the USB Drive > Format > Start > OK. Or launch Powershell > enter format /fs:fat32 : and wait for the process to finish. You can format drives smaller than 32GB in File Explorer; for larger drives, you must use Powershell.
Oct 1, 2019 · In most cases, it should only take a few minutes but it also depends on how large your external hard drive is. Use FAT32Format To Format Your External Hard Drives. The FAT32Format utility has been around for a long time and it lets you quickly format any of your external hard drives to FAT32.
