Need to format a > 32GB USB flash drive as FAT32 but Windows won’t let you? No problem, here is a free and safe utility that you can use to format your thumbdrive:

(dl website)

More details and background:

Recently I needed to format a 64GB USB flash drive as FAT32. This was for use in a Chevrolet vehicle that requires FAT32 and 32K cluster sizes in order to read from high capacity USB flash drive. I ordered a snazzy flash drive from Amazon, prepared to format it in Windows 8.1 and discovered that Windows would not format a drive larger than 32GB as FAT32 🙁 This issue will likely occur on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

Thankfully, there was an easy fix:

#1 Download fat32format

#2 Extract the downloaded ZIP file in a directory of your choice (C:\Users\User\Documents\X\fat32format in my example below)

#3 Open a command prompt and run the fat32format command, with the drive letter you want to format as the parameter.

Here is a transcript of my command prompt session where I formatted my drive:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600]

(c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\User>cd C:\Users\User\Documents\X\fat32format

C:\Users\User\Documents\X\fat32format>dir

Volume in drive C has no label.

Volume Serial Number is 70CE-03EB

Directory of C:\Users\User\Documents\X\fat32format

04/22/2015 12:10 AM <DIR> .

04/22/2015 12:10 AM <DIR> ..

04/22/2015 12:10 AM 49,218 fat32format.exe

1 File(s) 49,218 bytes

2 Dir(s) 62,225,920,000 bytes free

C:\Users\User\Documents\X\fat32format>fat32format d:

Warning ALL data on drive ‘d’ will be lost irretrievably, are you sure

(y/n) :y

Failed to allow extended DASD on deviceSize : 62GB 121438208 sectors

512 Bytes Per Sector, Cluster size 32768 bytes

Volume ID is 7ea:93d

32 Reserved Sectors, 14821 Sectors per FAT, 2 fats

1897008 Total clusters

1897007 Free Clusters

Formatting drive d:…

Clearing out 29738 sectors for Reserved sectors, fats and root cluster…

Wrote 15225856 bytes in 0.51 seconds, 28.20 Megabytes/sec

Initialising reserved sectors and FATs…

Done

C:\Users\User\Documents\X\fat32format>

That is all there is to it! 🙂