How to format a USB drive to FAT 16 on Mac OS X 10.7?

I assuming you really need FAT16 for some external requirement, otherwise why not FAT32??

See this for formatting an SD card to FAT16 via Terminal commands.

The same procedure should work for any USB drive. YMMV.

iPartition will also format FAT16.

I don't know if the free version wiill do it.

Steve

Sadly, a Makerbot2 needs a 2GB SD card formatted in FAT16.

Thanks for the links.

As if that weren't enough the 2GB SD cards at local retailers are mostly 4GB cards with a 2GB label on them. Lord knows why.

(Disclosure: I run Coriolis Systems, which makes iPartition)

FWIW, iPartition can indeed format things using FAT16, however it’s important to understand when you get FAT16 vs FAT12 or FAT32. In particular, if you’re using a PC MBR partition scheme, you might be confused into thinking that the partition type code is what matters… it isn’t. The only thing that determines what kind of FAT you have is the number of clusters into which the filesystem divides the available storage, and in iPartition’s case you can control that using the “Cluster Size” option in the “Format” sheet.

I need FAT 16 USB thumb drives for an old unit for data download. I can't buy these so I need to reformat the FAT 32 ones. I can't seem to get terminal to do it for me. But when I went to look at iPartition it says it won't run on Yosemite - so is it defunct now?