Why did FAT32 disappear as an option in Disk Utility?

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Level 1

13 points

Why did FAT32 disappear as an option in Disk Utility?

I recently noticed that Leopard and Snow Leopard no longer list FAT32 as a formatting option in Disk Utility. Why?

I have tried and found that 8GB flash drives formatted using FAT are not compatible with Windoze machines and means I have to format the flash drives on a Windows machine. I have also noticed that when erasing files from flash drives formatted this way does not reclaim the empty space... the files say they have been trashed but the drives still read as full... until I can get them to a Windows machine and format them using Windows OS.

I never used to have any problem but now that they changed Disk Utility it's a real pain.

Anyone else experienced any of this?

MacPro 2.66, Mac OS X (10.4.10), 6 GB ram.. iLife 08 /Aperture / CS3 / LightZone

Posted on May 17, 2011 5:03 PM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,036 points

May 17, 2011 5:07 PM in response to hassiman

MS-DOS(FAT) is FAT32. However, I've had problems using them on Windows regardless. I usually format them on a PC if I need cross-platform usage.

When trashing a file, you must empty the trash to recover the space.

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Answer 2

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

May 18, 2011 12:32 PM in response to hassiman

Fat32 did not disappear, in disk utility MSDOS is FAT, it will be FAT16 if it is a very small drive (less than 2g) or FAT32 if it is larger than 2g.

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Answer 3

hassiman Author

Level 1

13 points

May 18, 2011 9:25 AM in response to Barney-15E

Ah HA! That is interesting.... but I imagine that to recover the space the trash must be emptied while the flash drive is still connected... I would think that once you have disconnected the flash drive without emptying the trash re-inserting it later and emptying the trash will not help

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Answer 4

May 18, 2011 11:06 AM in response to hassiman

There is an invisible .Trash folder on the flash drive where things you drag to the Trash are stored. It is as permanent as any folder anywhere, and its contents remain until the Trash is emptied. So if you remove the drive without emptying the Trash, everything remains in the invisible .Trashes folder. Reconnect the drive and you can then empty the Trash, deleting the contents of the .Trashes folder.

Francine

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Answer 5

May 17, 2011 5:06 PM in response to hassiman

I have also experienced this option disappearing, but I do not have any idea why Apple removed it.

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