Why need Western Digital FAT32 formatting tool? Western Digital (WD) hard drives especially portable hard drives have been formatted with NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) by default, so that it can be better compatible with that operating system. Well, why need you to format WD hard drive to FAT32? Although FAT32 performs slowly than NTFS in Windows, it has inherent advantages.
Then open Disk Utility, then click on the WD device on the left., then click on Erase tab at the top, then for Format (or Volume Format) option, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), then click on Erase at the bottom. Please reply at the box below to continue troubleshooting.
And the most outstanding one is its mighty compatibility. Therefore, some user needs Western Digital FAT32 formatting utility because he wants to connect his NTFS-formatted My Passport Ultra to Mac OS.
If he switches his WD drive between Windows OS and Mac OS frequently like dual boot OS on a PC, he needs to format the drive to a file system which works well in both operating systems. Comparing with exFAT, FAT32 has higher compatibility. Given that you need to share the information or files on WD external drive with other consoles like XBOX ONE, PS3, PS4, Android, etc. NTFS is definitely not the proper file system that those consoles can read.
Naturally, changing from NTFS to FAT32 ahead of time is a wise move. You probably have other situations that need a Western Digital FAT32 formatting utility for Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10. But what counts next is to find out how to execute the formatting. Format Western Digital Passport to FAT32 with WD Quick Formatter WD Quick Formatter, also known as WD Advanced Format Drivers (AFDs), is an external hard drive format utility for Windows and Mac, developed by Western Digital Technologies, Inc. External drive like WD Elements, My Book and My Passport can be formatted to FAT32 via this tool. In addition, other brand external hard drives like Seagate external drive can be formatted by this utility as well. To use WD Quick Formatter:.
First, connect WD external hard drive to your computer and make sure it can be detected. Download and install WD Quick Formatter. In most cases, you need to unzip it before you can install. Second, start WD Quick Formatter. Read the warning and click on Continue. Next, accept the End User License Agreement. Third, let the utility scan external hard drive.
Select the WD drive when it completes. Finally, wait for the formatting progress completes patiently. Tips:. If the external drive is 2TB in size or less, you can directly format it.
If it is greater than 2TB, you have Factory Default and XP Compatible two options to select. Choose the appropriate one according to your situation. If WD Quick Formatter says it cannot mount the volume, close all applications on your Western Digital drive or whatever may use the drive and retry. Please note that software like auto-backup programs, anti-virus and remote access applications have great possibility to take up your drive.
As a matter of fact, WD Quick Formatter is a handy application in formatting WD portable hard drive to FAT32. Nevertheless, users search help online because or not working now and then. What’s worse, this application not allowing 4K to 512 sector format, which may reduce the performance of portable solid state drives. Also, as covered, it only applies to external hard drive. What if you want to format WD internal HDD to FAT32 or exFAT some day? Format WD drive to FAT32 in Command Prompt Windows brings you internal formatting utilities as well.
Command Prompt is an effective formatting utility that can help you format Western Digital drive to FAT32 on the condition that the partition is no bigger than 32GB in size, otherwise, you’ll receive the error:. Here are detailed steps on how to format small partition to FAT32 with Diskpart. Note that all data will be overwritten after formatting, so please backup important files ahead of time. Press + key combo to start Run.
Then type “diskpart” in the box and press to open Command Prompt. Input following commands in order and each command is followed.
list volume. select volume X (X is the partition on WD drive). format fs=fat32 quick.
exit Tips: you can run format f: /fs:fat32 directly in CMD, which may take more time to complete formatting. Diskpart to format Western Digital drive with FAT32 file system is quite easy. Nevertheless, the 32GB limit prevents large drive being formatted.
In that case, you may need to turn to other professional tools to achieve the goal. Better Western Digital FAT32 formatting utility for Windows 7/8/10 To format Western Digital external hard drive FAT32, you actually have a better choice. Is professional and easy-to-use hard drive formatting software that can do you a big favor. It allows you to format WD hard disk to FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, etc.
With ease in Windows 7/8/10/XP/Vista. Providing that you don’t want to perform the formatting under Windows environment, you can create a bootable device with WinPE environment on and format Western Digital drive to FAT32 there.
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For instance, you need to format internal WD HDD where system installed sometimes. Now, have Western Digital FAT32 formatting utility freely and have a try. How to format 1TB Western Digital FAT32 in Windows 7 step by step?
Connect the 1TB WD drive to your computer and make sure it is detected by Windows. Install and run the free WD FAT32 formatting tool AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard on your Windows 7. Right click the WD external drive and select Format Partition. In the prompt page, specify partition information.
This is the place where you select FAT32 File System, edit Partition Label, and choose Cluster Size. As you can see, you can also format Western Digital hard drive to exFAT if you need to. Preview the result.
Click Apply and then Proceed to execute the formatting. Tips:. If the Western Digital showing up as Unallocated, please right click it and select Create Partition to create a new simple volume with FAT32 formatted. With the guide of above steps, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard as Western Digital FAT32 formatting utility for Windows 8 as well. To format WD internal hard drive, go Create Bootable Media to create a bootable USB drive or CD/DVD.
Then, shut down your computer and boot from the USB drive. You’ll see AOMEI Partition Assistant the moment you log on Windows. Do formatting there.
Please note that your system cannot boot any more after formatting, so take it with cautions. Conclusion Certainly, except for WD Quick Formatter and AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, there are other Western Digital FAT32 formatting tools. Among which, the Disk Management and Diskpart of Windows 7 are useful tools as well. However, to search an all-around and powerful formatting tool which is totally free, AOMEI Partition Assistant could be the one. Apart from formatting WD disk to FAT32 file system, the software does great in. A higher version of AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, edition, provides advanced features such as command line partitioning, allocate free space, securely erasing SSD in Windows 7 and quick partition and so on.
FAT32 will let you directly plug the drive into both windows and mac. But you are limited to an individual file size of 4GB mac OS extended will be readable only by macs but your files can be larger.there are ways to make the different file systems readable by the other type of computer, i'm referring to default OS capabilities. when sharing the drive over the network the format only matters to the computer the drive is physically plugged into. (only mentioning because this comes up frequently in relation to this question in the forums). (Hierarchical File System, a.k.a. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Don't use case-sensitive). Read/Write HFS+ from native Mac OS X.
Required for or or backups of Mac OS X system files.To Read/Write HFS+ from Windows, Install.To Read HFS+ (but not Write) from Windows, Install. Maximum file size: 8EiB. Maximum volume size: 8EiB. You can use this format if you only use the drive with Mac OS X, or use it for backups of your Mac OS X internal drive, or if you only share it with one Windows PC (with MacDrive installed on the PC) (Windows NT File System). Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X.To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X, here are some alternatives:. For Mac OS X 10.4 or later (32 or 64-bit), install (approx $20) (Best Choice for Lion and later). For 32-bit Mac OS X, install (free) (does not work in 64-bit mode). For 64-bit Snow Leopard, read this:. Some have reported problems using (approx $36).
Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard and Lion, but is not advisable, due to instability. AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS. Maximum file size: 16 TB. Maximum volume size: 256TB. You can use this format if you routinely share a drive with multiple Windows systems. (FAT64). Supported in Mac OS X only in 10.6.5 or later.
Not all Windows versions support exFAT. AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support exFAT.
Maximum file size: 16 EiB. Maximum volume size: 64 ZiB. You can use this format if it is supported by all computers with which you intend to share the drive. See 'disadvantages' for details. (File Allocation Table).
Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.Maximum file size: 4GB. Maximum volume size: 2TB. You can use this format if you share the drive between Mac OS X and Windows computers and have no files larger than 4GB. Click to expand.I'm still on an old version of iPhoto, but I'm pretty sure the iPhoto library is still actually a folder, much like OS X (and iOS) applications. It may look like a file, but that's just some trickery in the Finder-if you right-click it and do 'Show Package Contents' (or look at the directory in Terminal), you'll see what I mean.
(That being said, it's presented as such to prevent the average user from poking around inside the 'file.' It's meant to be modified by iPhoto itsef only.). Click to expand.Besides Time Machine (which requires directory hard-linking, a Leopard addition to HFS+), I'm not aware of any (though if you're using it for Mac backups at all, even manual ones, I'd say HFS+ is still a good idea since you're less likely to run into problems with the type or number/length of characters in file names or file sizes since different file systems have different restrictions here). If file/folder permissions are an issue, HFS+ is really the only file system supported on OS X that contains this feature.
FAT variants simply don't support this at all, and NTFS does, but Apple's implementation is read-only. This probably isn't a big deal for most people, however. In short, if you're only using it on Mac, go with HFS+ (a.k.a. MacOS Extended). If you want to use it on Windows as well, consider a different format (see advantages and disadvantages another poster provided) or multiple partitions (as suggested by others, e.g., above).