Summary :

MiniTool Partition Wizard is a rich-featured partition magic, which is designed to optimize disk usage and to protect your data. It comes with so many powerful features with which you can completely control your hard disk and partition. MiniTool Partition Wizard Free 12.3 on 32-bit and 64-bit PCs. This download is licensed as freeware for the Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) operating system on a laptop or desktop PC from hard disk partition software without restrictions. Partition Wizard Full Version 12.3 is available to all software users as a free download for Windows. As the best partition manager for Windows, MiniTool Partition Wizard aims to maximize disk performance. It helps create / resize / format partitions flexibly, convert disks between MBR and GPT disks, convert partitions between NTFS and FAT32 and convert dynamic disks to basic without losing data in. MiniTools Software Limited developed Minitool Partition Wizard as a manager for disks and partitions on your Windows computer. It serves other functions in the management of your hardware like space analysis and wiping the partitions.

Are you looking for a professional FAT32 formatter to format your USB flash drive, external hard drive, SD card to FAT32 for better compatibility? This post will show you some ways and you can try them according to your needs.

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Why Choose FAT32

What Is FAT32

When it comes to FAT32, you should know it refers to a version of the file allocation table (FAT) which is available since Windows 95 OSR 2 and Windows 98. It increases the number of bits used to address clusters and also reduces the size of each cluster. As a result, it can support larger disks (up to 2 terabytes) and better storage efficiency (less slack space).

FAT32 is an old file system, so many old operating systems including Win95, Win98, Win2000, Win2003, Win Vista and more support this file system.

What’s more, as for some old game consoles, FAT32 is available. When reading here, you know FAT32 has very good compatibility. Besides, USB drives adopt the FAT32 file system by default.

Why Format to FAT32

Generally speaking, this is mainly because of the better compatibility of FAT32, despite that it can not support files larger than 4GB file size for single files.

Let’s focus on a common issue for more information: What is the best format for a USB drive?

If you are using a USB drive but the partition is formatted to NTFS before, now you want to use your USB disk to connect to a game console PS3/PS4, Linux, or Mac OS X. In this case, you need to use a FAT32 formatter tool to change the file system to FAT32. Otherwise, PS4 can’t read USB flash drive or you are unable to write in Mac OS/Linux.

Moreover, there is another case showing the necessity of formatting a hard drive to FAT32. You want to connect your USB disk or Seagate/Western Digital external hard drive to a NAS but the NTFS permissions cause the NAS not to access the drive. Under this circumstance, the better solution is to adopt FAT32.

How to Change Your Drive to FAT32

In order to get the best compatibility of your drive, using FAT32 as the file system is a good choice. Then, it is likely that you are wondering: How do I format a USB drive to FAT32? How do I convert NTFS to FAT32?

As a matter of fact, these two problems are often asked by many users. Today, in this post, we will show you how to change your external drives, USB disk or SD card to FAT32 in two cases in Windows 10/8/7.

Case 1: Important Data Are Saved on Your Hard Drive

Usually, there are some important files stored on the USB drive, SD card, memory stick or external USB hard drive. When there is a need, it is a better solution to adopt a professional FAT32 formatter tool to convert NTFS to FAT32 because of the limits of Windows Disk Management. (We will show you some details later.)

The Best FAT32 Format Software - MiniTool Partition Wizard

MiniTool Partition Wizard, professional FAT32 Converter, is recommendable since it enables you to not only convert NTFS to FAT32 but also convert FAT32 to NTFS without any data loss. It is compatible with many OSes including versions of Windows 10/8/7 and Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016 depending on different editions.

Convert NTFS to FAT is a paid feature, so you should use MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Edition or a more advanced edition to change your SD card, USB disk or external hard drive to FAT32.

Step 1: Launch this FAT32 format software and enter its main interface.

Step 2: Focus on your SD card, USB disk or external hard drive partition to choose Convert NTFS to FAT from the right-click menu. Alternatively, you can select partition and click this feature from Change Partition column.

Step 3: At last, hit the Apply button at the top-left corner to execute this FAT32 conversion formatting process.

With the help of this application, you can easily and effectively change your external hard drive, USB drive or SD card to FAT32 from NTFS, which won’t have any influence on the data of your hard drive.

Case 2: No Data Are Stored to Your Drive

Suppose that there are no important data stored on your hard drive, you can choose to directly format your disk to FAT32. Here we will show you four ways to format NTFS partition to FAT32 and just choose one according to your needs.

Tip: If you want to do a FAT32 format SD card, you need to use a card reader to connect your SD card to the computer and then start disk formatting.

FAT32 Format USB/SD Card - MiniTool Partition Wizard

To convert USB disk/SD card/external hard drive from NTFS to FAT32, this professional partition manager can also be used as a dedicated FAT32 formatter to format SanDisk/Kingston USB drives, SD cards (SDHC/SDXC cards) to FAT32 effectively in Windows 10/8/7. This way, you can use the drive in between Mac OS, Windows and Linux freely. (Also works to format drives to other file systems.)

Before the FAT32 format USB flash operation, you can free download MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition and install this best FAT32 formatting application on your computer and have a try.

Note: In addition to formatting a drive to FAT32, these file systems including NTFS, FAT16, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, exFAT and Linux Swap are also supported.

Here is how to format to FAT32:

Step 1: Run MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition to its clear main interface to start FAT32 format SD card/USB drive.

Step 2: Choose the target partition and click Format Partition under Partition Management in the left pane.

Step 3: Specify the partition label, file system and cluster size for your target partition. Here FAT32 should be chosen. After finishing these settings, go back to the main interface.

Step 4: At last, hit the Apply button to perform formatting operation with this FAT32 format software.

Built-in FAT32 Formatter – Windows Disk Manager

In Windows 10/8/7, there is a snap-in FAT32 formatter which is used often. Usually, when referring to Windows format, Windows Disk Management is a good choice due to its clear user interface and accessibility (built-in free tool).

With it, you can create/delete/format volume, change drive letter and path, extend/shrink volume and so on. How do you format a flash drive to FAT32 with this disk manager? Follow the guidance as follows:

Press Win + R keys to open the Run window.
Type msc to open Computer Management. Then, go to Disk Management.
Choose the target partition of your removable disk or external hard drive that you want to format to FAT32 and click Format from the right-click menu.
In the disk formatting interface, specify volume label, file system (FAT32) and allocation unit size. Perform a quick format is selected by default in Windows 10/8/7.

Note: You may ask: how to format 64GB USB to FAT32? Actually, Windows Disk Manager can’t allow you to format FAT32 larger than 32GB. From the following screenshot, you see there is no FAT32 in the file system list. In this case, please resort to the third-party FAT