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We're going to show you two ways to format larger USB drives with FAT32. One method uses PowerShell (or the Command Prompt, or Terminal on Windows 11), the other a free, third-party tool.
How to Format Your Thumb Drive to FAT32. Formatting a USB drive in FAT32 is as easy as selecting a few options in File Explore or Disk Management, or running a few commands from Command Prompt or PowerShell. We'll show you all these methods below.
You can read about a bunch of them in our guide to the best free portable apps for your flash drive toolkit. You'll find system utilities, for sure, but also apps for just about every need you have — productivity, communications, graphics and image viewing, and a lot more.
Fortunately, Windows makes formatting drives pretty easy. You can format a drive---and perform other functions like creating and deleting partitions---using Windows' Disk Management tool. But if formatting is all you want to do, there's an easier way.
You don't need to use any complex tools to format a USB flash drive. You can do it directly in File Explorer. But what do all of the options mean, and which should you choose?
There are a few ways to format a solid-state drive (SSD) in Windows 10. Most of them --- like the Disk Management tool --- are overkill for your day-to-day needs. The simplest way to format an SSD is through File Explorer.
To format a hard drive or SSD in Windows 11, open File Explorer, browse to "This PC," right-click the drive, and select "Format" to start the process. When formatting, consider the capacity, file system, allocation unit size, and volume label.
Whether you're formatting an internal drive, external drive, USB flash drive, or SD card, Windows gives you the choice of using three different file systems: NTFS, FAT32, and exFAT. The Format dialog in Windows doesn't explain the difference, so we will.
Use FAT32 if you need maximum compatibility between devices and won't be moving files larger than 4 gigabytes. Otherwise, use exFAT --- it supports larger drives, larger files, and almost all newer game consoles and operating systems.
WiNToBootic is another free tool that allows you to create a bootable USB flash drive for installing Windows 7 or Windows 8. It supports an ISO file, a DVD, or a folder as the boot disk source. It's a standalone tool that doesn't require installation and it operates very fast.