How to format a disk/sdcard as FAT32 in windows 10. I indeed ended up using a Verbatim FAT32 format tool to do it for me due to the filesize of 64 gigs being too big. Therefor this answer is accepted, as its technically what I had to do. @LPChip you mean the partition size was larger than the built-in tool would use for fat32.
In windows 10, when you want to format a partition specifically as FAT32 (for example an SDcard that is going to be used in your phone) when you right-click the disk and choose format, only NTFS and exFAT are shown as possible format options.
Is there another way, preferably without installing an additional tool or booting into a different mode to format as FAT32?
3 Answers
While LPChip's answer is 'correct' and should work in most cases unless the partition is over 32gb. I typically use a bit of third party software from ridgecrop that does the same thing but handles larger partitions. I've used their command line fat32formatterextensively over the past few years.
They have a GUI tool that more or less does what it says on the tin now. Formatting speeds are crazy fast and I've not had any issues with it.
Yes.
The GUI version of format is limited only to NTFS and exFAT, probably because this is what you'll ever need on Windows.
Luckily if you run format
from the command prompt, you can specify far more options to format your disk in.
Format /?
shows the following:
As you can see, /FS:filesystem
allows you to format as
FAT (fat16), FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, UDF and ReFS.
![Verbatim windows fat32 format tool Verbatim windows fat32 format tool](https://www.disk-partition.com/screenshot/en/std/format-partition/format-128gb-usb-to-fat32/apply.png)
I just ran into this issue and found that the Disk Management tool built into Windows can handle this for partitions of 4GB or less.
Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Create and format hard disk partitions or search for Disk Management.
Right click on the volume and choose Shrink Volume..., then shrink it to 4GB or less. After that, both FAT32 and Quick Format options will be available in the Format... dialog.
protected by Community♦Sep 8 '17 at 10:12
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