I'm not sure if the above commands are all identical on older OSs (XP). If you've got a USB disk larger than 2 terabytes, however, you'll want to use convert gpt instead. Converts the disk to MBR format, which will work just fine for most disks. Sets the device status to online if it's been disabled. You can see the current attributes with attributes disk or detail disk.

This command will unset the read-only flag on the disk. As above, this will destroy the data on the disk (or, rather, your ability to access it). In some cases you might need to re-initialize the disk.

That will take a very long time and usually isn't necessary, but may help uncover physical damage to the disk.

If you're still having problems with the disk after trying this, you might try omitting the quick from step 9 to do a full format. I recommend using exFAT instead, which is essentially a newer version of the same format.) You can choose NTFS or exFAT instead of FAT32 if you want. Marks the partition as potentially bootable. There are basically two ways to format USB to FAT32 on Mac Terminal Command and Disk Utility and in case you lose important data while formatting, it is possible to recover the data using a data recovery tool. No size is needed if you want to use the whole disk Some USB drives can’t be used directly with a Mac system until you format them to be compatible with the macOS extended file system. Any data on the disk will no longer be accessible.)

clean (Warning: This command erases the disk's partition information.

Confirm that you're using the right disk with detail disk. select disk n where n is the number of the disk.

Find the disk that corresponds to your USB disk.

However, the file system is not supported by many older systems.Assuming Vista or 7 (this should work on XP, 8, 8.1, and 10, as well) and that the disk is not showing up under My Computer at all: In theory, data capacity of up to 2 TB is possible, but Microsoft has limited the partition size in newer systems to 32 GB in order to promote the modern NFTS format.ĮxFAT is a further development of FAT that in principle offers unattainable storage and data capacity. The maximum data size is limited to 4 GB in the latest version FAT32. It is not supported by many applications.įAT is a file system developed by Microsoft that is also supported by Linux and macOS. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with the addition that the file system can differentiate between upper and lower case (e.g. HFS+ or Mac OS Extended (case-sensitive and journaled) Windows/Linux devices are only able to read but not write on USB sticks in this format. Choose 1 Partition from the volume scheme and then. A file system developed by Apple that is particularly suited to data media with large memory capacity. Cannot format external hard drive on Mac OS 10.5 Open the disk utility and select the external drive.

Hoq to format usb on mac