Formatting USB drive to FAT32 file in Windows 10

Hi Rom,

Thank you for posting on Microsoft Community. We appreciate your interest in Windows 10.

We will help you in resolving your issue.

Before assisting you further, I would like to ask you few questions related to the issue.

Does the issue persist specifically with one USB drive?

Does the USB drive work fine on other devices?

When you tried to format the drive, did you get any error message?

Are you able to view the contents in the USB drive when you connect it to the PC?

To format your USB drive to FAT32, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Connect your USB drive to the device and click on Open folder to view files option.

Step 2: Right click on your USB drive and click on Format option.

Step 3: From the window, select FAT32 from the drop down bar under File system.

Step 4: Click on Start and OK to commence the formatting process.

Step 5: Once the formatting is completed click on OK.

Hope this helps!

We will be happy to assist you with any issues pertaining to Windows.

Thank you.

  In answer to your questions, the USB works fine with my PC.  I can view the contents, there were no error messages when I formatted it.

When I select the file system I am given two options NTFS or exFAT.  I don't seem to have the option to select FAT32.

The documentation on the player says that it has to be FAT12/16/32.

Does Microsoft offer a utility that will allow me to format in more than exFAT or NTFS using Windows 10?

Hi Rom,

Thank you for keeping us updated on this query.

We are sorry to inform you that Microsoft does not offer any utility that will allow you to format the USB device in more than exFAT or NTFS in Windows 10.

Get back to us if you are facing any issues pertaining to Windows, we will be happy to help you.

Thank you.

That's good to know so I don't spend time looking for one.  If the drive is small enough I can do it in DOS.  The drive I was trying to format was 64G, the DOS format command balks beyond 32G.

I did receive some instructions which I've archived for future reference.  I do believe in the future this could become more annoying for more people as auto type players that accept usb drives are not updated nearly as often as software.

I ran into the problem on a 2013 player.

Hi,

There is a Free disk management program called Partition Wizard 9...

It is available as a ISO that will create a bootable CD...

You can format your Flash Drive this way...

If you don't have a CD\DVD drive, there is a tool called Y.U.M.I PenDrive Linux that will put it on a bootable flash...

Don't know if you've sorted this yet but you can use Macrorit Disk Partition Expert. It's free for home use and works fine on Windows 10 if you run it in windows8 compatibility mode.

http://macrorit.com/?mde

What's the size of the USB HDD? If it's > 32 GB then FAT32 is not officially supported based on this article.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938432.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Windows 10 does not give you the option to format in fat32?

Is this a question or a statement?