How to Format USB Drive to FAT32 – Best USB Format Tools

USB drives are most commonly used today in all aspects of daily life. For USB drives, FAT32 is the 1st-choice file system due to its outstanding compatibility. In this article, I will show you four Windows built-in USB format tools to format USB drives quickly.

Warning: Formatting will lead to data loss on the selected drive, make sure you have the latest backup before you proceed.

Option 1: Format with PowerShell #

See how to format USB to FAT32 by using Windows PowerShell:

Step 1. Click the Windows Search bar and type “Powershell”. From the best match, run Windows PowerShell as Administrator.

Step 2. Next, type “get-disk | get-partition” to let PowerShell show all your disk partition information. At this time, please pay attention to finding the drive letter of the USB drive you want to format to FAT32.

Step 3. In this step, you need to type “format-volume -driveletter F -filesystem FAT32 -newfilesystemlabel TECHSCSI”. Please take care that you need to change the drive letter to your owns and the file system label to your preference.

Step 4. Finally, type “exit” to leave PowerShell.

Tip: Using Windows built-in USB format tools, you are able to format partitions smaller than 32 GB to FAT32. To overcome, use top-rated free partition manager instead.

Option 2: Format via CMD #

If you are more familiar with Command Prompt, here you can follow this easy guide to formatting USB drive:

Step 1. From the Windows Search menu, type “cmd” and run Command Prompt with administrator privilege.  

Step 2. Now do the followings:

1. Type “diskpart” and hit Enter;
2. Type “list volume” and hit Enter; Meanwhile, identify the volume number of your USB drive.
3. Type “select volume volumenumber” and press the Enter key.
4. Type “format fs=fat32 quick” where quick is optional and then press Enter.
5. Type “exit” and press Enter to leave diskpart. Repeat to leave command prompt.

Option 3: Format through File Explorer #

Most average users, they are likely to format USB to FAT32 through File Explorer. Here is what they did in order to format:

Step 1. Right-click This PC (named My Computer in Windows 7 and the earlier versions) to show Devices and Drives connected to your computer.

Step 2. Find the USB drive you want to format to FAT32. Right-click on it and choose “Format…” from the context menu.

Step 3. In the new emerging window, make sure you select FAT32 as the target file system. You can also customize the allocation unit size as well as the volume label before your continue.

Step 4. Click “Start” to proceed.

Option 4: Format in Disk Management #

Finally, it is also very easy if you try to format in Disk Management – a build-in disk management tool that can resolve a lot of hard disk issues without a reboot.

Step  1. Press Win + X to call out the power user menu.

Step 2. From the disk map, right-click on the USB drive to be formatted and choose “Format…”

Step 3. You may see or not see the warning message as the image shows under, depending on whether the USB drive is an Active Partition or not. Whatever, format, click “Yes” to confirm.

Step 4. Now, set your volume label, the file system (as FAT32), and the allocation unit size if you want a larger cluster size (otherwise, just keep the default settings) and hit “OK”. By doing this, Windows will warn you all data on the drive will be erased. To format the USB drive to FAT32, click “OK” and wait for Disk Management to finish.

Note: When your USB drive has FAT32 file system, you are likely to see “file too large for USB” error when copying or moving large files to the USB, as the maximum file size FAT32 support is 4GB. To overcome, NTFS and exFAT are two good choices on Windows operating system.