If Windows won't format your USB drive to the FAT32 file system, remove the write protection or use CMD, PowerShell, or free software to do the same.

This guide show how to format a USB drive to FAT32 file system using File Explorer and Disk Management tool on a Windows 11/10 PC.

If you need a USB drive that's widely compatible with different devices, you may want to format it to FAT32. Here's how to do so on Mac and PC.

You can format an external drive quickly and easily in Windows, without the need of any third-party tools. But before you format your USB drive, you need to consider which file system to use.

If you need to format a USB flash drive, here's how it's done on all three major operating systems.