After choosing the best format for USB drive according to your needs, you might start to wonder: how do I format USB drive to NTFS/FAT32/exFAT/EXT 2,3,4/HFS+ in Windows operating system or Mac? Well, don't worry. If you need to format USB drive to NTFS/FAT32/exFAT/EXT 2,3,4/HFS+ file system, please follow the steps as below. Open My Computer Select Format on the flash drive. Choose NTFS in the File System drop-down box. Click the Start button and wait until finished. If you have formatted your USB using Better Performance policy to remove a device safely without data loss use a 'safely remove hardware' procedure or Eject function from Windows Explorer. Part 2: Format NTFS Drive on Mac The second task is how to format NTFS drive on Mac. NTFS is built for windows operating system therefore it is not supported by Mac. For this case, it is advisable to install programs called NTFS 3G, which works in, handy with MacFuse. Both of these are first installed in the computer.
Do you want to convert USB flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS so that you can copy file that is larger than 4GB to the USB? You can find various brands of USB flash drive including SanDisk Cruzer, Toshiba, Samsung, Kingston, Lexar, and more. Today’s flash drive was usually formatted with NTFS file system in order to meet user’s demands for storing files that has large size. However, some old USB flash drive, especially the flash drive which has a capacity less than 32GB, was still formatted with FAT32 file system.
>Related Article: Convert FAT32 to NTFS
Reformat USB Flash Drive from FAT32 to NTFS on Windows
It does not matter what kind of USB flash drive you are using, you are able to convert its file system from FAT32 to NTFS by reformatting. You can insert the USB drive to a Windows computer including Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 to perform a quick format so as to change its file system to NTFS.
> To get all methods to reformat a USB flash drive under Windows platform, please refer to this page: Free to convert fat32 to ntfs by reformat
Format FAT32 Flash Drive to NTFS When There Is No Option for NTFS File System
When you attempt to format a FAT32 flash drive on your computer, you may find that there is no option for NTFS file system (show as the image below).
Reason for the problem:
This problem often occurs when you format a flash drive that has capacity less than 32GB. Since FAT32 file system only supports disk that is less than 32GB, it will format the flash drive to FAT32 by default when its capacity is less than 32GB. On the contrary, if you attempt to format a flash drive that is larger than 32GB, there will only NTFS file system for option.
How to format FAT32 flash drive when there is no option for NTFS?
If there is no NTFS option when you format a flash drive in My Computer, you can follow the steps below to format the USB drive to NTFS successfully:
Step1. Open Disk Management and select Device Manager
Step2. Click Disk drives to show the USB flash drive that you want to format
Step3. Double click the USB flash drive to show its Properties and then click Policies tab. And then select Optimize for performance and click OK button (On Windows XP)
If your computer runs Windows Vista / 7 or later version of Windows, it shows Better performance
Step4. Right click the USB flash drive and then format it with NTFS file system.
Pay attention: If there is still no NTFS for option after optimizing for performance, you can reboot your computer or reinsert the USB drive before performing formatting
Change USB Thumb Drive to from FAT32 to NTFS on Mac
Mac computer has a quite different operating system compared with Windows computer. Windows operating system usually supports FAT, FAT32, exFAT and NTFS file system, while the Mac OS supports HTFS+, FAT and EXT file system. If you only have a Mac computer but want to change a USB thumb drive from FAT32 to NTFS, what can you do?
Please refer to the following steps:
Step1. Connect the USB thumb drive to Mac computer and install a NTFS driver on the computer.
Step2. Click Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility, it will show all internal and removable disk on your Mac computer.
Step3. Click the USB drive and click Erase tab > select NTFS under Format pull-down menu
>> If you want to know more methods to convert an FAT32 drive to NTFS, please go to this page: Convert FAT32 to NTFS
Free to Convert NTFS to FAT32
Sometimes, you may want to convert a NTFS drive to FAT32? You can try to format the NTFS drive to see if there is option for FAT32 file system. Sometimes, system does not allow you to format a disk back to a lower version of file system, so probably there is no FAT32 file system for option when you try to format the NTFS drive.
If you are unable to format NTFS to FAT32, you can also use a partition magic tool like IM-Magic Partition Resizer.
>>To get more methods to convert NTFS to FAT32, please go to: Free to change NTFS to FAT32 without data loss
Download Proper Version of IM-Magic Partition Resizer
For Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP/2000 > Download IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free
For Windows Server All versions > Download IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server
- What are file systems?
- FAT32 vs NTFS: What's the difference?
- What's the best Windows USB format tool?
- Format USB to FAT32 & NTFS
- Convert FAT32 to NTFS without losing data
As a tiny, portable and somewhat capacious removable storage media, the USB flash drive, thumb drive or USB stick seems to be seen everywhere among modern computer users. What are the purposes of owning a flash drive? In general, we use a USB drive mainly for transferring files across operating systems and different devices, or making a bootable USB drive for booting up a failed or crashed computer.
In order to make full use of a USB drive's capacity and performance, it's essential to format it with an appropriate, compatible and efficient file system. Do you know what is the best file system for a USB drive? Should you choose FAT32 or NTFS while formatting the USB flash drive?
EaseUS Partition Master is your optimal choice to format the USB drive to FAT32 or NTFS in Windows 10/8/7:
Here we will explain reasons and give answers to whether you should format USB drive to FAT32 or NTFS with the best USB format tool.
What are file systems?
A file system can be interpreted as an index or database containing physical location of every piece of data on a storage drive. The structure and logic rules used to manage the groups of data and their names is called a file system.
A Windows computer, Mac, smartphone, Xbox and any place that stores data must adopt particular kinds of file systems to read, write, store and organize data on various storage media, including a flash drive, memory card, pen drive, hard drive, HDD or SSD. In simple terms, without a matched file system, the media will be totally useless as it cannot be recognized at all by your certain device.
There are many different kinds of file systems. Each one has different structure and logic, properties of speed, flexibility, security, size, etc. Following examples are the most commonly acknowledged and used file systems on popular operating systems.
Don't miss: completely free FAT32 & NTFS formatter for USB
NTFS: (NT File System) It's the default file system for all Windows versions.
HFS+: (Hierarchical File System) It's the default file system for macOS versions.
APFS: (Proprietary Apple File System) It's developed as a replacement for HFS+ since the release of iOS 10.3 and macOS 10.13.
FAT32: (File Allocation Table 32) It's an older standard Windows file system before NTFS.
exFAT: (extended File Allocation Table) It's developed based on FAT32 and offers a lightweight system without all the overhead of NTFS.
EXT2, 3 & 4: (Extend File System) It's initially created specifically for Linux.
FAT32 vs. NTFS: What's the difference?
Now you should have a basic understanding of a variety of file systems in prevalence. When it comes to the final selection for a USB flash drive between FAT32 or NTFS, which one will you choose?
Following is an overall explanation of each.
FAT32 is compatible with all operating systems since it's a simple file system and has been around for a really long time. In contrast, NTFS is more robust and effective than FAT as it adopts advanced data structures to improve reliability, disk space utilization and overall performance. The application of NTFS has grown but FAT32 is still more universal.
What's more, FAT32 can be converted to NTFS but it's getting hard to convert NTFS back to FAT, due to the facts that NTFS has great security, file by file compression, quotas and file encryption.
Don't miss: completely free FAT32 & NTFS formatter for USB
FAT32 or NTFS? Which one should you choose?
If you're looking to decide which file system to use when formatting a USB drive, most of all, you should consider two of the most important aspects: portability and file size limits when made your own decision.
Format To Ntfs Mac
As you can judge from the comparison table, FAT32 is almost supported by all operating systems, only to notice that it cannot transfer or store a single file larger than 4GB & max partition size should be under 2TB in size. However, NTFS seems to have no limit in dealing with extremely large files and partition sizes.
In one word, it's a good idea to choose your own format like this:
If you'd like to use the USB on older computers, or non-PC systems like digital picture frames, TV sets, printers or projectors, choose FAT32 because it is universally supported; In addition, if you're using multiple different operating systems in one same computer, FAT32 is also a nice choice.
While if you're using the USB drive as a Windows computer backup drive, to store high-definition videos, movies, pictures and any other large files, at the same time, asking for a high security, choose NTFS.
What's the best USB format tool?
Once made your own decision as above guided, it's time to format your USB drive a desired file system. No matter it's a newly bought flash drive or a used one, you can directly use a capable USB format tool to format the USB drive to FAT32 or NTFS.
As a matter of fact, in Windows OS for example, there are many accessible ways for users to format a disk. The most familiar ones are Windows File Explorer, Windows Disk Management and Windows Command Prompt. Here we introduce none of them. Instead, we show you a third-party Windows USB format program - EaseUS Partition Master Free, which will greatly ease your worry of encountering the problem of 'Format option is greyed out', 'Windows cannot complete the format', etc. What's more, the third-party software is free, user-friendly, powerful and be able to convert FAT32 to NTFS without losing data, which the aforementioned programs cannot handle that.
Guide: format USB to FAT 32 & NTFS
Step 1: Select the USB drive to format.
Connect the USB drive or pen drive to your computer. Download and launch EaseUS partition software. Right-click the USB drive you intend to format and choose 'Format'.
Step 2: Set the drive letter and file system.
Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.
Step 3: Check the warning box.
Click 'OK' if you see the Warning window. If you have important data on it, back up the data in advance.
Step 4: Apply the changes.
Format Pen Drive Ntfs Mac
Click the 'Execute operation' button first, and then click 'Apply' to format the USB drive.
Guide: convert FAT32 to NTFS without losing data
Step 1: Install and launch EaseUS Partition Master on your computer.
Step 2: Select a FAT32 partition, right-click on it and select 'Convert to NTFS'. If you need to convert a storage device such as SD card or USB flash drive to NTFS, insert it into your PC first and repeat the previous operation.
Step 3: Click 'OK' on the pop-up dialog box to continue.
Format Flash Drive Mac Ntfs Drive
Step 4: Go to the upper left corner, click the 'Execute 1 Operation' button and you will see the operation details. Click 'Apply' and 'Finish' when the process completes.