By Cherry / Last Updated May 15, 2020

Why you want to format external hard drive to FAT 32?

Scenario: I want to format a USB flash drive to FAT 32 as that’s what my car infotainment system can read. However, Windows 10’s format command only offers NTFS and exFAT. So, here is the question: how to format external hard drive to FAT 32 on Windows 10?

Actually, different operating system supports different file system. If you have a NTFS hard drive, you can only use it on an operating system like Windows 10/8/7. If you plug the NTFS hard drive to a Mac, it won’t be recognized. FAT 32 is a file system used wider than NTFS. Both Windows operating system and Mac operating system would recognize it, and many game machines are using FAT 32 like PS3, PS4, Xbox, Xbox 360, etc. If you want to use the external hard drive on those OSes, or if you want to solve this kind of problem that PS3 cannot read NTFS USB drive, you must format the external hard drive to FAT 32.

How to format external hard drive to FAT 32 on Windows 10?

People using Windows 8/7 can format external hard drive to FAT 32 with Disk Management, or using Diskpart to format USB and any other external hard drive. However, you will find that Windows 10’s format command only offers NTFS and exFAT. Fortunately, here will introduce you two ways to format external hard drive to FAT 32 on Windows 10.

Format external hard drive to FAT 32 by using DOS

Step1. Press “Win+R”, type “cmd” in the search box. It will display you the command prompt.

Step2. Input the syntax “format /FS:FAT32 F:” at the prompt. F is the drive letter of your external hard drive in your Windows 10.

Step3. Hit Enter, it will run the task.

Format external hard drive to FAT 32 with a professional format tool

AOMEI Partition Assistant is a professional partition manager that can help you format external hard drive to FAT 32 on Windows 10/8/7 with a concise interface. You can use it to format external hard drive including HDD, SSD, USB flash drive, SD card and any other removable storage device to FAT 32 in s very simple way. Here you can see the detailed steps for formatting external hard drive to FAT 32 on Windows 10 with AOMEI Partition Assistant.

step1. Connect your external hard drive to your computer and make sure it can be detected by Windows Explorer. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. To format external hard drive, here you need to select the external hard drive, right click it, select Format Partition.

Format Partition

Step2.Here will pop out a window, select FAT 32 at the File System menu. Click OK.

FAT32

Step3. You will back to the main interface and you have already format the external hard drive to FAT 32. Click Apply and it will execute the task.

Apply

Tips:

● This operation will erase the data on the external hard drive. So you’d better backup the data no the external hard drive before formatting.

● AOMEI Partition Assistant provides you convert NTFS to FAT 32 without losing data.

AOMEI Partition Assistant is such a great powerful disk manager. Besides format partition, you can also use it to initialize disk, wipe hard drive, wipe partition, and many more.