Press 'Win+ R' keys on your keyboard to open 'Run' dialog, input 'cmd' and press Enter to open Command Prompt window. In the window, enter 'chkdsk g: /f /r /x' and hit on Enter to execute this command. Note: replace g with the drive letter of your flash drive. Right-click your flash drive and then select Format. In the File System list box, choose exFAT, type in a Volume Label if you want, and then click Start. Click OK to the format warning and wait. Go to the Applications folder on your Mac's hard drive, then go to the Utilities folder, and launch Disk Utility. Select the drive you want to format. Warning: the following steps will delete any info you currently have on the drive. Click the Erase button. Click the Format menu, then choose either MS-DOS (FAT) or ExFAT. Click 'Disk Utility' to open it, and click on the name of the flash drive in the sidebar. Click on the 'Erase' tab at the top of the window. Select the format for your flash drive. In the drop-down list next to 'Format', select the format that you want to use for the flash drive. You can also set a name for your drive. Just enter it in the box next to the name. Format the USB flash drive.
Not every flash drive out there can be used with a Mac computer right out of the box. Some flash drives have to be formatted first before you can store files on them. In this article, we are taking a closer look at the Disk Utility, which comes with all recent versions of the Mac OS X operating system and how you can use it to format USB drive on Mac.
Usb Flash Drive Format
Format Flash Drive Mac with Disk Utility
Type a name for the USB drive in the 'Name' field. Click on the 'Erase' button located at the bottom right corner of Disk Utility. Click on 'Erase' again when the confirmation dialog box displays on-screen. Your USB drive will now be formatted and ready for use on your Mac computer.
Your Mac computer comes with a handy utility appropriately called Disk Utility, which can be used to format any storage device. To use it:
- Connect the flash drive that you want to format.
- Go to Applications and Utilities and launch Disk Utility. The application will appear on the screen, and you will see the main window, with a list of available storage devices on the left and various disk management options on the right. At the bottom of the main window are storage device details, including disk description, connection type, USB serial number, total capacity, write status, S.M.A.R.T. status, and partition map scheme.
- Select your storage device from the list on the left and click on the Erase tab. Before you can click on the Erase button located in the Erase tab, you must select which file system you would like to use and give it a name. If you're not sure which option you should choose, continue reading this article to find out more information about the main file systems used by macOS and Windows.
- With everything set, you may click on the Erase button to start the formatting process. Depending on the size and speed of your flash drive, it may take a minute or two. Once the formatting process is finished, you should be able to transfer files to the newly formatted flash drive.
Understanding File Systems
Flash Drive For Apple Format
macOS and Windows support different file systems. The main file system of macOS is HFS Plus. It was developed by Apple and first introduced in 1998 as an improved version of HFS, supporting much larger files and using the Unicode encoding.
Format D Drive Flash Drive
Microsoft has also developed their file system for Windows, NTFS. This proprietary file system was introduced in 1993, and it supports metadata and advanced data structures to improve performance, additional extensions for improved security, and file system journaling.
Unfortunately, these two file systems are not suitable for flash drives because of their limited support. The best file system for modern flash drives is FAT32. Even though FAT32 doesn't support long file names and only stores files up to 4 GB in size, the fact that it's almost universally supported across all operating systems makes it perfect for flash drives.
How to Recover Data After Format
We all make mistakes, and you wouldn't be the first person in the world to accidentally format a USB flash drive. Disk Drill, a premium data recovery solution for Mac OS X with support for all popular file formats and common storage devices, is here to help you recover deleted files from USB flash drive. Disk Drill's advanced data recovery algorithms can find lost files even after complete format.
Your Companion for Deleted Files Recovery