How to Format My USB Drive to FAT32?

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1

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to format my SanDisk pen drive to FAT32, but I’m running into some issues and not sure what I’m doing wrong. In File Explorer, when I right-click and choose Format, FAT32 doesn’t even show up as an option — only exFAT and NTFS. Disk Management was also checked, but that didn’t help either.

Is there a reason why FAT32 isn’t available for this USB size? How to format a 64GB USB drive to FAT32? Any help or step-by-step advice would be really appreciated.

2

@Jennifer9527 That means Windows does not support formatting the drive as FAT32.

Have you checked our knowledge base articles?
( Get Support for Your SSDs and Flash Products | Sandisk )

Try this this one.

3

Here’s a free tool I think you’ll like: Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

4

Nothing is wrong with your drive. This is a Windows limitation, not a USB problem. Windows intentionally hides FAT32 for drives larger than 32GB, even though FAT32 technically supports up to 2TB. Microsoft pushes exFAT instead. That’s why you don’t see FAT32 in the menu.

Use the command prompt to format the drive: format X: /fs:fat32.

5

FAT32 has partition size limitation: it can be formatted up to 32GB in Windows.To be more specific, it does not allow users to create FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB, nor does it allow users to format partitions larger than 32GB as FAT32.

  • If you try to format your 64GB USB drive ( or other hard drives larger than 32GB) to FAT32 in File Explorer or Disk Management, you are unable to find the FAT32 file system option.
  • If you try to format it in DiskPart, it will tell you “Virtual Disk Service error: The volume size is too big.”
  • If you try to perform the format in CMD, you will be prompted that the volume is too big for FAT32.
    In this case, you’ll need to use third-party disk partition programs to complete the reformat. Read also: How to Choose the Best Format for Both macOS and Windows