Formatting Flash Drive

Discussion in 'Macintosh Computers' started by DeSnousa, Mar 19, 2005.

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  1. DeSnousa, Mar 19, 2005

    DeSnousa macrumors 68000

    DeSnousa

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    #1
    Hey, i was reading a couple of posts lately about fat32 being windows formatt. I require my usb flash drive to be read on windows when im at school.

    I also read that you do this in disk uitility but im only seeing osx (theres's 3) and unix options. How do i formatt it to fat32 guys.

    Thanks in advance :cool:
     
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  2. grapes911, Mar 19, 2005

    grapes911 Moderator emeritus

    grapes911

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    #2
    Click on the flash drive in disk utility, not the partition in the flash drive, then select MS Dos File System and Erase
     
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  3. DeSnousa, Mar 19, 2005

    DeSnousa thread starter macrumors 68000

    DeSnousa

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    #3
    Thanks alot, i knew it was somewhere, thanks again.
     
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  4. annk, Mar 20, 2005

    annk Administrator

    annk

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    #4
    This confuses me - by USB flash drive, you mean those little memory sticks you can use to transport info from one computer to another, right?

    If so, why does it need to be formatted at all? I´ve been using mine for 2 years now to move various sorts of files between PCs and Macs. All I do is plug it in, whichever computer I´m on recognizes it and all the data is always available.

    Am I missing something, or are these flash drives something else?
     
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  5. grapes911, Mar 20, 2005

    grapes911 Moderator emeritus

    grapes911

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    #5
    Your flash drive, probably came formated in Fat or some other semi-standard, widely used format. Its pretty common for them to work right out of the box, but not always.

    Plus, if a drive of any size is not formated, it will never beable to store data. The format is how the computer knows where to put the bits to be saved.
     
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