If you're moving it between Mac and Windows, you want to format your flash drive with the FAT32 filesystem. It shouldn't matter whether you format it on your Mac or on a Windows machine.
To do it on the Mac, plug in the flash drive, and open Disk Utility (in your /Applications/Utilities folder). The drive should appear in the list on the left of the DU window.
Select the drive, then click the Erase tab. On that tab, select MS-DOS (FAT) as the volume format, choose a disk name if you want to, then click Erase, and wait.
That said, if your drive just 'didn't work any more' after a while, it may be faulty and it's possible that re-formatting it won't help. (All flash drives do have a finite number of read/write cycles before they don't work reliably any more, too, although it's unlikely you've reached that limit through normal usage.)
To do it on the Mac, plug in the flash drive, and open Disk Utility (in your /Applications/Utilities folder). The drive should appear in the list on the left of the DU window.
Select the drive, then click the Erase tab. On that tab, select MS-DOS (FAT) as the volume format, choose a disk name if you want to, then click Erase, and wait.
That said, if your drive just 'didn't work any more' after a while, it may be faulty and it's possible that re-formatting it won't help. (All flash drives do have a finite number of read/write cycles before they don't work reliably any more, too, although it's unlikely you've reached that limit through normal usage.)
Aug 23, 2008 1:22 PM
How To Format A Flash Drive For A Mac
Format A Flash Drive For Mac And Pc
Select the USB flash drive in Disk Utility. Click the 'Partition' tab, if you want to use more than one partition in the drive. A drive with two partitions, for example can have one partitioned in ExFAT and another in a Mac OS Extended format, so you can use the same drive on a Mac and a Windows computer. Windows FAT32 USB Drive in Mac Click on the “Erase” button on “Disk Utility” and choose the format as either APFS or Mac OS Extended. In most cases, your Mac will show the supported format by default and you don’t need to change it. On older Mac, you will see an additional scheme option, choose “GUID Partition Map”.
Format Flash Drive For Mac And Windows 10
- Larry: Erasing will erase the drive and set it up using the format you selected. I suppose if they used “format” then some people would think it meant to reformat the drive and somehow maintain the data.
- Method 2: Format a USB Flash Drive Using Diskpart. Using diskpart to format a USB flash drive is another useful method, and even it works for the computer user who has no exFAT options in File Explorer or Disk Management. However, the user should select the correct volume before carrying out a quick or full format on your USB flash drive.