Still, if you don’t want to-or can’t-download a third-party app, using the format command is pretty straightforward.
Aside from the length of time, you also won’t know if formatting failed-unlikely but possible-until the process is done. Formatting our 64GB USB drive took almost over an hour, and we’ve heard some people complain that it can take many hours for bigger drives. The downside to doing this is that it can take a long time. You can format USB drives larger than 32GB with FAT32 by using the format command in PowerShell or Command Prompt-the command uses the same syntax in both tools. Format Large USB Drives with FAT32 by Using PowerShell No need to relaunch the tool or anything. If this happens to you, just close the File Explorer windows and try again. If you don’t, the tool will interpret the drive as being used by another app and formatting will fail. One thing to note here: you’ll need to close any open File Explorer windows before you format the drive. The truth is that FAT32 has a theoretical volume size limit of 16 TB, with a current practical limit of about 8 TB-plenty for most USB drives. Specifications put out by manufacturers on file systems as they pertain to drive size created the myth that FAT32 can only be used to format drives between 2 GB and 32 GB, and that is likely why native tools on Windows-and other systems-have that limit. Every major operating system and most devices support it, making it great for drives you need to access from different systems. The advantage to using FAT32 is portability. If you do need those larger file sizes, you’ll need to stick with something like NTFS or exFAT.
RELATED: What File System Should I Use for My USB Drive?įAT32 is a solid file system for external drives, so long as you don’t plan to use files over 4GB in size. For whatever reason, the option to format USB drives larger than 32GB with the FAT32 file system isn’t present in the regular Windows format tool.
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