Mac format fat32 command line
Windows 7 Professional bit: John, does your computer recognize the drive when it's connected? It sounds like the drive is broken to begin with. Did you try any of the tools? Tina, nope. The first basic advice just doesn't work. The cmdline tool starts the process, it's true, but ends up with a "volume is too big for FAT32", even with a 64GB.
Please correct. The method worked fine on Windows 7 back when I wrote the article in If it no longer works, I recommend using one of the third-party tools. The article above is your guide. I would try this tool: Downloaded the FAT32 utility, which promptly formatted the drive in 10 seconds. Hope future visitors see this! This does not work. May or may not be an issue for you depending on your system spec. However, if you read the other comments you will understand that there are situations in which FAT32 is required! And for those people wanting to connect a large hard drive to one of these devices, this article will be extremely valuable.
You can't have any single file larger than 4gb in size with Fat Now that's a major limitation! Fat32 is less secure, that's another reason NTFS was created. Fat32 should be left to flash drives. In fact, to backup the OEM harddrive using the system's backup utility to an external drive, you need a FAT32 usb drive for that too.
It is true that Windows won't mark "weak" sectors, however this is not guaranteed using any other "proper" software for the job either. I haven't used them in a while but SeaTools used to have problem with those sectors too. If the sector was found weak and the data couldn't be read and relocated it would be marked as pending until [any] data was written to it again. I would rather use Check Disk than some third party software simply because in addition to mark bad sectors it is able to detect File System errors.
Unless the tool is able to do that it would just relocated the same bad data. All drives nowadays come pre-formatted.
How to Format USB Drive on Mac | Beebom
The only reason to re-format is because you want to have another file-system. Using the format tool to determine whether the drive has bad sector or not is very unreliable it does not even check if the written sectors can be read and also only writes zero-bytes. If you are in doubt your drive is still OK you should really use the manufacturers test tools. Those work much more reliable and are also able to properly mark the sectors as bad. Doing a quick format on a brand new drive is asking for trouble because it doesn't actually verify that all the sectors can be written to.
Yes, formatting a 1 TB drive can take a while, but it's less time than doing a quick format and having to recover your lost data when you find out the drive is bad. Also pretty much all digital cameras use FAT32 on their memory cards.
Step 2. Format/Convert USB to FAT32
I mentioned the 'compatibility' issue of NTFS in the previous two articles on formatting and file systems, but should obviously have made it clear in this one! Thanks for your comment. This article is part of a mini series. You should also check out the other two posts: So, both pc and mac can have access to it.
NTFS can be read by macs, but cannot be written. I am a bit curious as to why you would want to format a partition to fat32 just wondering if there are any hidden benefits to the file format or is it a requirement for some niche application. Top Deals. Email Facebook Whatsapp Pinterest Twitter. Enjoyed this article?
Stay informed by joining our newsletter! Enter your Email. Read our privacy policy. Thanks for leaving a comment, Tomas. I've updated the article accordingly. Unfortunally I't can't format more than 2TB anyway Nothing works. Real Nice. Thank you for your comment, Andrea. I want to convert my 1 tb external ntfs hard drive to FAT.
Please guide me. Xbox one, ps4. Can format large 5tb external drives fast and easy. Fat 32 is the format. How do I format a disk partition from the command line on OS X? Melab Melab 5 See this answer.
How to format a disk to FAT32 on a Mac / OS X
Then enter: Generally, you would use diskutil list to get the slice identifier. Next you use diskutil unmount identifier , followed by the format command. Finally, use diskutil mount identifier. For example. Using diskutil to format a partition slice can have the side effect of altering the type of partitioning a drive is using. David Anderson David Anderson I will include your eraseVolume addendum in my answer, so it will not mess your answer: Linked 7. Related 7. Hot Network Questions.