I have an external drive that was used as an Apple backup. I erased the contents of the USB storage device (All the back-ups), but I can not format it to FAT32.. It is presently formatted to APFS (case-sensitive). I am using Monterey 12.7.6. I opened dick utility and see the drive, but no format options. Any advice? 2.1 TB USB drive. Thank you
iMac 27″, macOS 12.7
Don’t. Use XFAT. FAT32 has a partition size limit of 32GB. There are ways to create and format a partition larger than that as FAT32, but it may break compatibility with other systems.
Did you do the erase using the Finder (dragging contents to the Trash) or through Disk Utility?
If you dragged to the Trash, make sure the Trash is empty and try a DU erase again.
I figured it out. I formatted it to FAT 32.. The USB storage device is 2TB… AOK? I will be using to record streaming movies
Should be fine to use on your Mac. Will ‘probably’ be OK if you want to use it with another machine, but there’s a chance it won’t be.
Format to Fat32
