Even though the FAT32 format is so versatile and widely used, Windows 10 doesn’t allow its users to format the hard drive in FAT32. There is a reason behind it. As it is an extremely old file system and that’s why it has two signifi cant limitations:.
How to format USB drive to FAT32 in Windows 10?
As Windows 10 format utility doesn’t let you format USB drives larger than 32GB to the FAT32 file system, we need to either use the disk utility from the Command Prompt or use a third-party tool to format the USB drive to the FAT32 file system.
How to format Windows 10 to exFAT or NTFS format?
When it comes to formatting the drive to ex. FAT or NTFS file system, you can do with the usual or in-built Windows 10 formatting tool known as Disk Management. But, you can’t use the formatting tool if you would like to format FAT32 Windows 10.
Does windows 10 recognize fat32?
Yes, FAT32 is still supported in Windows 10, and if you have a flash drive that is formatted as a FAT32 device, it will work without any problems, and you’ll be able to read it without any extra hassle on Windows 10.
Generally speaking, you can format it to FAT32 file system easily and successfully in Windows File Explorer. However, sometimes you might find there is no FAT32 file system in the format option. Why this problem appeared? It is usually due to that your partition is larger than 32GB.
You should use FAT32 on the drives where there is a requirement for maximum compatibility with a wide range of devices, and you don’t have any 4 GB or larger file in size.
Why can’t I format a FAT32 file system?
While formatting a large hard drive, external hard drive or USB drive as Fat32, you may fail to complete the format using the default Windows format tool – using Windows File Explorer or Disk Management. It is because the FAT32 file system has a 32GB max size limit.
Can diskpart format a large hard drive to FAT32?
, although disk Part is a great choice when Windows Disk Management and File Explorer fail to format hard drive to FAT32, it also shares a common limitation with the other two tools: they cannot format a large drive (over 32GB) to FAT32.
What is the maximum size of a FAT32 file on Mac?
It has been the standard format for hard drives and floppy disks so to maximize compatibility across modern systems including Mac, Linux, and Windows. The maximum size of the file you can store in the hard drive with FAT32 is 4 GB along with an 8TB maximum partition size.