How to format an external drive as FAT32?

Question

Level 3

660 points

How to format an external drive as FAT32?

Hi. In 10.4, you used to be able to format drives as FAT32. Seems 10.5 has lost this ability. I need to format a drive in order to recover some lost data from a nearly dead PC. Unfortunately, the PC cannot do the formatting so the only "live" computer I have is my Mac. If this cannot be done in 10.5, is there an external utility that can do this for me?

Thanks!

p.s I've got Parallels and XP2, but it won't recognize my Lacie USB drive when I plug it in, perhaps because it's formatted for Mac.

MacBook Pro with lots of extra stuff, Mac OS X (10.5.2), iPhone in pocket, iPod in car, Nikon and Adobe everything

Posted on Mar 17, 2008 11:28 AM

Reply

Answer 1

J Michael Author

Level 3

660 points

Mar 17, 2008 11:35 AM in response to J Michael

PS I tried the Disk Utility from my Tiger install disk but when I click on it, it loads the 10.5 disk utility instead.

Reply

Answer 2

Niel

Level 10

726,755 points

Mar 17, 2008 7:05 PM in response to J Michael

Use the MS-DOS option in the Disk Utility when erasing the drive.

(30683)

Reply

Answer 3

Mar 17, 2008 7:23 PM in response to J Michael

I use freebie fat32format.exe on a Windows box because some os's can't format FAT over 250GB.

Reply

Answer 4

J Michael Author

Level 3

660 points

Mar 18, 2008 6:38 AM in response to Niel

That option is not available in Leopard, or at least does not appear to be. See screenshot:

http://qamera.smugmug.com/photos/267313273_qHXWT-L-0.jpg

Reply

Answer 5

J Michael Author

Level 3

660 points

Mar 18, 2008 6:40 AM in response to dmccollam

As I mentioned, I can't use the Windows PC and also the WinXP VM (using Parallels) won't recognize a Mac formatted drive, so I can't run any disk utilities from that either.

Reply

Answer 6

Kurt Lang

Level 9

57,864 points

Mar 18, 2008 6:55 AM in response to J Michael

The option is still there, but you need to go to the partition option first. Highlight the drive in Disk Utility and click the Partition tab. Click the Options button and choose "Master Boot Record". Click OK. Select your partition scheme as usual and click the Partition button. You will now have the option to erase the drive as MS-DOS.

Reply

Answer 7

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Mar 18, 2008 6:59 AM in response to J Michael

I take it then that you don't have XP running natively either on your Mac.

Leopard has made changes so that sometimes a FW or USB2 drive won't mount or show up, which often means that new OS X requires a firmware update for the bridge it uses - Oxford or some other - and the vendor needs updated firmware.

That leads to a 'catch-22' situation.

If you boot from a DVD (Tiger or Leopard) same problem? FAT (or MSDOS) has always worked here, any size, even mixed.

If you do get it to mount, I would go to Partition tab in DU, then Options... and change it to Master Boot Record.

I know you want FAT, but just to see if it helps, you could try the NTFS driver MacFUSE 3G to see if it helps any (it can format to NTFS if the drive is using MBR).

Try plugging in the USB drive after the system is booted if you haven't yet. IntechUSA Speedtools has a PC Format utility, but I don't think it really adds anything and costs as much as a new drive would, which is always one option.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire - never had any trouble with these.

Reply