Format USB drives to FAT32 using FAT32 Format tool
Download this free tool to format USB drives larger than 32GB to the FAT32 file system if you don’t want to use the Command Prompt.
Step 1: Download and run the FAT32 Format utility.
Step 2: Select the USB drive you want to format, choose Quick format, and then click Start to start formatting it with the FAT32 file system. All data on the drive will be erased.
The FAT32 file system is supported by all third-party partition management programs available today. You can use any of them.
Method 3 of 3
Format Large USB Drives with FAT32 by Using FAT32 Format
If you’re willing to download a free third-party app, using the GUI version of Ridgecrop Consultants’ FAT32 Format is the simplest way to format larger USB drives with FAT32 (click the screenshot on that page to download the app). Since it is a portable app, there is nothing you need to install. Just run the executable file.
Choose the drive to format in the “FAT32 Format” window, and if desired, type a volume label. Click the “Start” button after choosing the “Quick Format” option.
A window appears to inform you that you will lose all of the data on the drive. Click “OK” to format the drive.
Compared to the command line method described in the following section, formatting with this tool is much faster. Our 64GB USB drive was formatted by this tool in a matter of seconds as opposed to over an hour with PowerShell.
One thing to keep in mind is that before formatting the drive, you must close any File Explorer windows that are open. If you don’t, the formatting process will fail because the tool will think the drive is being used by another app. Simply close the File Explorer windows and try again if this occurs to you. No need to relaunch the tool or anything.
How to use Rufus to format a USB drive to FAT32
If your USB drive is larger than 32 GB, youll need to use a third-party program like Rufus to format it.
Although there are many other programs that can format USB drives, Rufus is incredibly portable and small. This implies that Rufus can be installed directly on a USB drive, plugged into any Windows computer, and used to quickly format other drives.
After you download Rufus, double click on the . exe file to start the application.
Make sure your USB drive is selected. Then, click the “Boot selection” dropdown and select “Non bootable”:
Next, click the “File system” dropdown and select “FAT32”.
You may also modify the name of your USB drive in the “Volume label” field:
Then, click the “Start” button to format your drive. After a few seconds itll be formatted to FAT32.