Step 1: Connect your USB drive and run Terminal on your Mac. If Disk Utility doesn't work for formatting your USB drive, you can also format a flash drive to FAT32 with Terminal. Option 2: Format USB to FAT32 with Terminal
#HOW TO REFORMAT A USB DRIVE ON MACBOOK PRO MAC#
For example, Mac doesn't allow you to format 32 GB and smaller SD cards as MS-DOS (FAT32). The reason why MS-DOS (FAT32) is greyed out on your Mac could be that the option is unavailable for the USB drive you are formatting. MS-DOS FAT is Mac's name for the FAT file system, including FAT32, FAT16, so when MS-DOS (FAT32) is greyed out, you can just format a USB drive to FAT32 with the MS-DOS FAT option on Mac. What is the difference between MS-DOS FAT and MS-DOS (FAT32)? And why is the FAT32 option greyed out? It is very confusing that sometimes you get both MS-DOS FAT and MS-DOS(FAT32) in Disk Utility and in some cases, the MS-DOS (FAT32) option is greyed out.
#HOW TO REFORMAT A USB DRIVE ON MACBOOK PRO PC#
You can remove it from the Mac computer and use it in Windows PC or your card. Now your USB drive has been formatted as MS-DOS (FAT32). Step 6: When the format process is complete, click Done. Step 5: Select Master Boot Record and click Erase. Step 4: In the Erase menu, enter a new name for your USB thumb drive if needed and select MS-DOS(FAT) or MS-DOS(FAT32) for format. Step 3: Select the connected USB drive and click Erase on the top. Step 2: Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Step 1: Plug the flash drive that you want to format into your Mac computer. Normally, you can format a USB drive to FAT32 in Disk Utility on Mac. Option 1: Format USB to FAT32 in Disk Utility If you need to recover deleted files after formatting the drive or extracting files from the drive before formatting, you can also use a USB file recovery tool - FonePaw Data Recovery to help you with that. If you have trouble in formatting USB to FAT32 on Mac, follow this guide, which will show you 2 ways to format the flash drive to FAT32 on Mac. However, you might find there is no FAT32 option to format USB drive on macOS Mojave, High Sierra or earlier version. You may need to format your USB drive to FAT32 if you want to transfer files between Mac and Windows PC with the USB drive or use the drive for the navigation/audio system in your car. FAT32 is the most widely used file system for USB flash drives.