How to Format USB Device When FAT32 Option is Not Available

In this tutorial, we are going to see how to format USB device when FAT32 option is not available. Windows 10 automatically does not allow you to format external USB drives larger than 32GB to the FAT32 file system. The Format Utility dialog box only offers NTFS and ExFAT file systems for USB drives larger than 32GB.
 

 
 
Since the Windows 10 format utility does not allow you to format USB drives larger than 32GB to the FAT32 file system, we need to use the disk utility from the command prompt.

Before we start how to format your USB for the FAT32 file system, remember that FAT32 does not support files larger than 4GB. That means if a file is larger than 4GB, you can’t transfer it to FAT32 drives.
 

How to Format USB Device With FAT32 Option Using CMD

Please note that formatting large USB drives in FAT32 can take hours.

Step 1: There are two ways to open the command line. Click on the Start menu, type CMD in the search box, then right-click on it and select Run as administrator. Or press WIN + R, type CMD, and press Enter.
 

 

 
Step 2: In the Command Prompt window that opens, enter the following command by copying, pasting and validating with the Enter key:

Format /FS:FAT32 F:

In the command, replace “F” with the actual drive letter of the USB drive you want to format to the FAT32 file system. As mentioned earlier, it can take hours to format the drive.
 

 
That’s All!