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.

In this guide, we'll show you the steps to format a USB flash drive on Windows 11 using File Explorer, Settings app, Disk Management tool, Command Prompt, and PowerShell.

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.

Launch Windows Explorer and navigate to "This PC." In the list of drives, you should find your SD card and how much storage it has available.

The Mac/Windows-compatible ExFat format allows larger file sizes than the old FAT32.

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.