He began blogging in 2007 and quit his job in 2010 to blog full-time.

When I started to explain it, I realized that it wasnt actually terribly self-explanatory and depending on the situation, you may want to format the drive differently.

For example, if its a small 8 GB flash drive, then its an easier decision than if you have a 1 TB My Book on hand.

What Format Usb Stick And Pc Mac And Windows

Is it only going to be connected to Windows machines Or will you need to access it on Mac and Windows and be able to readwrite from bother operating systems.

When you right-click on a USB drive in Windows and choose Format, you get the following format dialog box.

You can click on the drop down and choose from a couple of file systems: NTFS, FAT, FAT32, and exFAT.

Before we get into what each format is, lets talk about the actual options you get when trying to perform a format.

Now lets talk about what each file system format accomplishes if you choose it.

You can virtually guarantee that by using the FAT file system format, you could plug your device into any computer running any OS or plug it into any electronic or digital device and have your data readable.

Obviously, you cannot use FAT or FAT32 on a USB drive that is greater than 32 GB because the FAT file system only supports up to 32 GB volumes in Windows.

In addition, the max file size on a FAT file system is 4 GB.

However, the FAT file system has no built-in security, so anyone can read the files.

FAT32 is better than FAT because it has a smaller cluster size and therefore wastes less space on the disk.

Basically, youre more likely to lose your data using FAT rather than FAT32.

Note that FAT32 can actually support volumes up to 2 TB, but Windows restricts the size to 32 GB also like FAT.

You can actually use a separate tool to format a USB drive in FAT32 that is larger than 32GB.

NTFS is usually only needed for internal hard drives running the Windows operating system.

However, if you really want the extra security, you can read my previous post on formatting USB drives with NTFS.

Whats so great about exFAT Its basically a mix of the good features from NTFS and FAT.

Its got less overhead than NTFS and it gets rid of the size limits on volumes and files that are present in the FAT file system.

It can only be read on Windows XP and later (with service packs installed) and OS X Snow Leopard and higher.

Outside of those two operating systems, there are not a ton of other systems that support the exFAT file system.

If you know the system youre going to be using the USB device on supports exFAT, then its the best choice because of the performance benefits and the lack of size restrictions.

What Format Usb Stick And Pc Windows 10 To Format

I used Windows 10 to format a drive to exFAT, but it was not readable on OS X for some reason.

What Format Usb Stick For Mac And Pc