How to Format a USB Drive on a Mac

USB drives are great for carrying or backing up data. Formatting is the process that erases all existing data on a USB drive and sets up the file system it will use. The file system is what tells the drive how to store the data that is to be written to, read or deleted from it. The type of file system that is needed on a USB drive varies depending on the type of device it will be used with.

While most devices will alert you if you connect a USB drive with an incompatible file system that needs to be formatted, refer to your device's documentation to find out what file systems are compatible with your device.

This guide will show you how to format a USB drive using a Windows PC.

Types of USB Drives

While the process to format USB drives is the same, they may come in different physical forms:

• USB flash drives
  
• External USB hard drives or solid state drives
  

Any and all data on the USB drive will be destroyed during this process. Make sure the drive is blank, or copy the data to a safe place before proceeding.

1. Insert a USB drive into your USB port.
2. macOS will recognize the drive and show its icon on the desktop.
   
3. Launch Disk Utility.
   1. Select Search in the top-right corner.
      
   2. type in "Disk Utility". Select the Disk Utility search result.
      
4. Select your USB drive from the list on the left.
   
5. Select Erase at the top.
   
6. Type in a Name for the drive, then select a Format.
   
7. Format types to select from are shown below.
   
8. Select Erase.
   
9. A progress bar will open. Wait will the drive is formatted.
   
10. Once complete, select Done.
    
11. Quit Disk Utility. Select the Disk Utility menu at the top, then Quit Disk Utility.