Regardless of which option you select, your USB drive should now be formatted as FAT32 and ready for use. Much like on Windows, you can format an external drive on Mac with just a few clicks. You can ...

Mac 911 How to format a USB thumb drive for both Mac and Windows The Mac/Windows-compatible ExFat format allows larger file sizes than the old FAT32.

You can format an external drive quickly and easily in Windows, without the need of any third-party tools. But before you format your USB drive, you need to consider which file system to use.

In this guide, we'll show you the steps to format a USB flash drive on Windows 11 using File Explorer, Settings app, Disk Management tool, Command Prompt, and PowerShell.

If you need a USB drive that's widely compatible with different devices, you may want to format it to FAT32. Here's how to do so on Mac and PC.