Formatting a USB stick

square_imp · 16 Jun 2010 at 18:08

Now I know this should be amazingly simple but I am getting annoyed with this. I am trying to format 2 16gb USB sticks so I can use them at work tomorrow on windows machines.

So I go to disk utility and have formatted both to one FAT32 partition - all good so far. However when i test them on a windows laptop they both aren't recognised properly, and I get told they need formatting. In the windows formatting options the drives are only recognised as being 0bytes and 200mb respectively.

All very odd and annoying - something about permissions I am told so I try and change permissions on the iMac and get no options at all..

Please someone help me out...

Square

xarr · 17 Jun 2010 at 10:26

Sorry, no help here, but I am having the same problem. Formatted on my MAC in FAT and it won't work on a windows 7 based machine. Any ideas people?

andicole0 · 17 Jun 2010 at 10:28

Can either of you try formatting on a Windows PC first and see if it makes an difference?

Andi.

xarr · 17 Jun 2010 at 10:59

The formatting option on a windows machine is strange, 400mb (or so) on an 8gb stick. It doesn't seem recognise it properly, so no, unfortunately I can't

R5GTT · 17 Jun 2010 at 11:12

Can you try hp's usb disk format tool on a windows machine to format as fat32.

I use that tool with many different usb sticks for preparing them for linux distros and the like and use them both on windows machines and mac's.

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

Nexus · 17 Jun 2010 at 11:36

When you format it with Disk Utility, did you format the partition that makes up the USB stick, or the actual root of the stick itself?

Sometimes, if you have say a drive that is OSX and then format just the partition as FAT32, the root table can still be OSX, which is why Window's won't recognize it. Trying another format, but make sure both the partition and root of the drive are FAT 32.

square_imp · 17 Jun 2010 at 13:24

Found the solution folks - when you format in disk utility there is an options button that opens this window:

Don't entirely understand what the options actually do to the stick - someone with more technical knowledge than me needs to explain but set to Master Boot Record the USB stick works perfectly in W7 and Mac OSX.

Nexus · 18 Jun 2010 at 00:45

Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at. You can format the disk as something else, but if the partition table isn't changed, then Windows can't see it. Used to see it a lot where I used to work and could sometimes be a nightmare when you got sent a drive with time critical work on it that couldn't be read as it wasn't formatted properly.