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Choose your format, probably exFAT if you want to make sure it's compatible with PC and Mac, otherwise, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is probably the best option. Give the drive a name. There are several applications available online for formatting USB drives such as 321Soft USB Flash Recovery for Mac,Data Recovery for Mac, and Disk Drill. These third party tools allow to format flash drive on your mac. But if want to format a flash drive.

Are there game boosters for mac. Not every USB drive can be used on Mac out of the box -- you need to format the drive to make sure it's compatible with the MacOS extended file system. And here in this article, we'll offer you a full guide on how to format a USB Drive on Mac. Besides, in case you lose important data due to formatting, we have a professional data recovery tool to help you recover data from a formatted USB drive on Mac.

Bonus: How to Recover Lost Data After Formatting USB Drive

This USB flash drive formatter for Mac will quickly format the USB flash drive and permanently erase all data information on the USB flash drive. It is strongly to use AweEraser for Mac to format the USB flash drive before you sell, donate, give away, dispose or abandon your USB flash drive. Select the USB flash drive in Disk Utility. Click the 'Partition' tab, if you want to use more than one partition in the drive. A drive with two partitions, for example can have one partitioned in ExFAT and another in a Mac OS Extended format, so you can use the same drive on a Mac and a Windows computer.

Part 1. What You Should Do First Before Formatting USB Drive on Mac

Make sure that уоu know clearly whаt уоu are doing whеn you begin the whole formatting process, which will еrаѕе your еntirе hаrd drivе.

To avoid formatting the wrong disk, firstly remove the USB drive from Mac, check the title of other storage disks, then insert the USB disk again and note the name of the disk. Next, drag the USB data to a safe location for backup/recovery measures before formatting it. Then you are set to get it done!

Part 2. What Is the Best Format for USB Drive on Mac?

You'll be given several format options when you try to format a USB drive on Mac, including Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), Mac OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled), Mac OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted), Mac OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted), MS-DOS (FAT) and ExFAT. If you are using macOS 10.13 or later, you'll also see an option named APFS, which is the default file system of macOS 10.13 and later.

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1APFS (Apple File System)

APFS is a new file system for macOS. It's the most appropriate format for SSD. However, you need the latest macOS to write to this file system. If you're sure that you don't need to use it on a Mac running old version in the future, then you can format your USB drive to APFS.

2Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) & Mac OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)

Mac OS X Extended, aka HFS+, is the default file system before APFS for macOS 10.12 and earlier. It doesn't put a limit on the size of files you can save on the drive, which is the greatest advantage. Windows-running computers can read the files formatted to Mac OS X Extended but can't write to them. And this file system is necessary if you plan on using the drive for Time Machine backups.

The biggest difference between Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) and Mac OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) is the latter one is case-sensitive to folder names. For example, 'file' is different from 'File'. Therefore, if you do not have special needs, just ignore this option.

3Mac OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) & Mac OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted)

These two are basically the same with the previous two but with encryption, which means you have to provide the password whenever you connect the drive to your Mac.

4MS-DOS (FAT)

This is Disk Utility's name for FAT32 file system. As the most widely compatible file system, it suits both Windows operating system and macOS. Therefore one can easily transfer data between PC and Mac using a USB drive formatted this way. However, a USB drive formatted to FAT32 doesn't support long file names and an individual file cannot be larger than 4GB.

5ExFAT

ExFAT is the improved version of the older FAT32, which offers larger storage space and supports files larger than 4GB. Of course it also supports transferring files between PC and Mac as a cross-platform file system.

To arrive at a conclusion, if you need to transfer smaller files between operating systems, choose MS-DOS (FAT) or FAT32. And with no doubt, ExFAT will be the best format for USB drive on Mac for larger files.

Part 3. How to Format USB to FAT32/ExFAT on Mac

As earlier stated, you need to first back up your USB drive before formatting it as the formatting operation will wipe all the data. Now, you can follow the steps highlighted below to get the USB successfully formatted.

Method 1: Format a USB Drive on Mac OS with Disk Utility

Step 1: Insert the USB waiting to be formatted to a Mac computer.

Step 2: Navigate to Applications > Utilities, and click it twice to open it.

Step 3: Select the drive you want to format and click on Erase.

Step 4: Rename the USB drive (optional), and choose one file system from the options.

Step 5: Then select Master Boot Record for scheme, hit Erase.

Step 6: Once the process is done, you are ready to use the drive with new file system to store data again.

Method 2: Convert/Format USB Drive to FAT32/ExFAT

Step 1: Connect the USB drive to your Mac computer.

Step 2: Click on cmd + space to run Spotlight, input terminal then tap Enter key.

Step 3: Type diskutil list to find the location of your USB drive (eg: dev/disk2 is the USB drive in the below picture).

Step 4: Type sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 MBRFormat /dev/disk2.

sudo gives you user right.
Diskutil calls disk utility program.
eraseDisk commands the formatting.
FAT32 sets the file system.
MBRFormat tells disk utility to format with a Master Boot Record.
/dev/disk2 is the location of the USB drive.

Note: You can replace FAT32 with ExFAT in the command, and your USB drive will be formatted in that way.

After the process completes, type diskutil list in command once more to check if the USB drive has been formatted successfully.

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Bonus: How to Recover Lost Data After Formatting USB Drive

Formatting a USB drive is never an easy task and problems tend to arise from time to time, among which data loss is perhaps the most common one. Users format a USB drive by mistake or directly format it without doing any backup job and both mistakes will cause data loss disaster. This issue will worry us even more when there are important files we cannot offord to lose. If this is the case, you'll need a professional data recovery software to help you get back lost files, and AnyRecover is what you need exactly. With this software,

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