Reformat USB stick

How can I reformat a USB stick from OS Extended (journaled) back to a PC.

Open the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder to format it as MS-DOS, or go to a PC and reformat it as exFAT or NTFS.
(104475)

Similar Messages

How do you reformat a usb stick

I can't find out anywhere how to reformat my USB stick so that I can add more information on it. It keeps saying that I don't have any space left on it, however there's nothing copied on the stick.

Same way you format and or Erase with Format any disk in OS X. With Disk Utility.

Patriot usb stick refuses to erase or reformat under apples disc utilities

i can no longer copy to or from a patriot usb stick that up until last week was working just fine. do these items go bad? i too have the 2 partitions on it btw. in addition some of the files are now corrupted apparently. will i need a windows platform to erase it? or is this usb device now history? apple's disc utilities will not reformat this device any more and the erase tap is grayed out. when i hit repair .... the repairs go on indefinitely even though it's only a 512 MB stick. any suggestions short of buying a new one?

Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to MBR then click on the OK button. Set the format type to MSDOS. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Now take it to your Windows notebook.

EXFAT formatted USB stick - sharing permissions wrong - Read Only - Cannot Reformat - Help please!

EXFAT formatted USB stick - sharing permissions wrong - Read Only - Cannot Reformat - Help please!
Hi.
Having various problems with a USB stick that is formatted in EX-FAT.
It was working fine for a long period.
Yesterday I lent it to a friend to put some things on it.
Now when I try and work on it, I get messages like this.
Mac OS X can’t repair the disk “Disk Name"
You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can’t save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can.
It will also randomly eject the drive.
I have tried to reformat it multiple times, in mac and windows.
[I have never used it in windows previous to this occasion of needing to reformat].
In windows, it crashes the disk when I attempt to format with disk manager [I attempted this due to advice in an internet article].
In Mac , I cannot even try to reformat it, because for some reason the permissions on the USB stick have been set to "read only" and I cannot find any way to change them to read-write, or full permissions, or whatever is appropriate.
I have tried "erase" disk in disk utility. I know how to do a full reformat, but it simply will not allow me to do so.
All the options are greyed out.
Does anybody have any information or links they can point me to?
I've been searching around.
Thanks very much in advance for any advice received.
Running latest mountain lion , 10.8.4, and windows 7 through VMware fusion.

Start over:
select the drive > select the Partition tab > select 1 Partition
select Option > select GUID Partition Table > select OK
name it > click the Apply button > then lastly click Partition

Usb stick is "READ ONLY FILESYSTEM"

hello.
i have a problem with my USB-Stick. since i gave it to a friend it does no longer work. unix says it is a "READ-ONLY FILESYSTEM". anny sugestions how i could change that?
it was not possible to reformat it by disk utility. i also tried to format it on a windows machine - didn´t work... any ideas?
best reagards
sepoe

Monkeymeetsrobot's suggestion is the first thing I would have suggested myself -- your original post made no mention of no write-lock switch -- many flash drives have them -- one of mine does and when locked would exhibit that behavior and the other one that doesn't, it still works properly.
That said, now that we know that yours doesn't have a write-lock switch, maybe you could try this:
It's a long shot, but what happens when you launch Terminal and type
ls -ld /Volumes/{usbStickName}?
If the permissions are not drwxrwxrwx, then, perhaps, from an admin-privileged account, you could
sudo chmod 777 /Volumes/{usbStickName}
and with any luck, you will have write privileges again.
Something to try....no guarantees....
Short of that, you may be giving your friend a slightly used usb flash drive as a Christmas present.
(if this solves your problem, or is actually helpful towards arriving at a solution to your problem, please consider marking this reply as "helpful" or "solved," in addition to, if applicable, marking this question as "answered")

USB Sticks don't mount

After having returned from a two week vacation my 2 USB-Sticks (SanDisk 1 G and Yakumo 512 MB) suddenly don't mount anymore. If I start DiskUtility it keeps spinning and spinning, if I pull the Stick out DiskUtility stops spinning and shows the stick (which isn't there anymore). This happens on all three OS-X systems I have! I cannot even reformat the sticks. I have all the latest updates installed.
Frans

I hope you didn't have valuable data on your USB sticks.
If you can't get them recognized and formated by Disk Utility on 3 different computers, I'd try to return them to the store.
There's no perfect solution for file storage. (Flash based) USB sticks, harddrives, DVDs can fail without warning you, so you should always keep backups available. Read http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/backuprecovery.html and search this forum. There are other utilities like Carbon Copy Cloner (free) and Superduper. You don't have to use Retrospect.

USB stick and FAT formatting

My USB stick stopped working on normal PCs.
First i thought that It's broken but I've figured out that it works on my mac.
So I don't know what to do to make it visible by a PC.
I formatted it more than 5 times already and nothing. I even erased all data and all the stuff.
And I picked the FAT option. So I don't know what seems to be the problem. :S

I've had problems on more than one occasion with a USB stick formatted as FAT on the Mac, where it works fine, but isn't recognized by Windows. What I've done is just reformat it on the Windows machine. After that the sticks have worked fine on both Windows and the Mac.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Odd free space issue with USB stick

I'm wondering what may be the cause of this. I have a 2 GB USB stick that 10.6.3 tells me has 2.02 GB available, yet I get an insufficient space error when attempting to move a 831 KB file to the stick. Could there be hidden files mucking up how the OS reads the stick?

I couldn't guess the cause but why don't you try reformatting the stick?
-mj

Unable to create a filesystem on an USB-stick

Hello,
since the switch to SL I can't create a filesystem on my USB-sticks with the disk utility, no matter what kind of filesystem (HFS+, FAT...).
Repair of permissions was unsuccessful.
Anybody an idea?
Thanks
matze

Do the following:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

1)Problems with Fusiondrive 2) Can't start from USB-Stick to repair

I have a big problem witn my self created fusion drive on my macbook pro. For weeks it worked fine and fast. But since the last week more and more errors ocured, such like stopping com.apple.medialibrary service etc. The system ran hot and hanged sometimes or shut down suddenly..
Now, it won't start anymore.
Following message appears after turning on:
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff7f93075b65): *This LVG was created before the fix for <rdar ://11023142>,you must recreate your LVGs"@/SourceCache/CoreStorage-380/core/btree/btree_impl .h:55
Debugger called: <panic>
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Adress
....followed by somelines of hex-adresses and further error mesages corresponding to the LVG-Problem...
I tried to start from my mavericks-usb-Stick, which works on my second Macbook (nearly the same settimg) fine and without problems. I pressed the "alt"-key while system start and could choose the stick as startup medium.
But after a few seconds the same error messages appear... The system won't start.
So I can't reformat and create a new Fusion drive. I have erased the NVRAM, which solved the problem, that the startup chime was missing...
I tried also to start with cmd+R, but the errors stayed the same...
Please is there anyone who can give me a hint. I need my macbook and I have only today a little time to fix it...
Thank
Mike

Thank you for your answer. I have put me internal DVD in an external case to make place for the hard disk (the ssd is at the old place of the hard disc).
I can't choose the externalDVD to start when I press "alt"-key...
Any other idea?

USB STICK HELP!!

hey team
i need immediate help. my 32gb lexar usb stick is not longer being recognized by both my MBP'S
im sure i need to reformat it. BUT it doesnt show up in 'my computer' 'finder' or even 'disk utility'
although it does show up in OSX (apple logo>about mac>System) i can clearly see it in the jump drive.
does anyone know how to solve my sticky situation.

1. If the drive inside it has failed, the data on it can only be recovered by a professional service, which may charge hundreds or thousands of dollars.
2. All drives will eventually wear out and fail. Keep any files you care about on at least two.
(111859)

How do I format a USB stick on my iMac

I am a recent mover to OSX and need to reformat a simple usb stick. I tried finder and could not figure it out.

Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

Making a Windows 7 Installation USB Stick

This is a discussion of making a bootable Windows 7 Installation USB-stick Media. It might apply to making other USB connected "Disks" like Smartcards bootable too.
I recently had to do this (a Laptop with no build-in DVD drive and no USB DVD drive around). And it turned out to be surprisingly simple, using nothing but build in Windows tools from the Disk. I only found
this german langauge guide and nothing in english (but I might just have searched after the wrong terms, google has been wierd regarding langauge lately), so I thought I write it up (along with some problems I ran into).
Making a USB-Stick into a bootable Windows 7 (and propably Vista) Media is a 3 step process:
1. Create a Active, Primary, FAT32 Partition of 4+ GB on the stick
2. use bootsect.exe from Windows Disk to create the MBR and Partition Boot Record for that Partition
3. Copy all files from the Disk to said Partition
4. Test if it boots
Detail analysis:
Step 1 is so simple I doubt it needs explanations. Create enough free space on the USB disk (at worst delete all previous Partitions). Make a Priamry Partition of 4+ GiB. Mark it as Active. Format it in FAT32. The Guide used Diskpart,
but this step can be done with any Partition Tool under any Windows, Linux, UNIX or DOS.
While the choice of FAT32 seems a bit outdated, theye propably did not gave the relevant bootlaoder the ability to read NTFS. Or maybe they just though FAT32 is enough for a media that is mostly read. I have not tried what happens if I format it in NTFS, but
it might be possible.
Step 2 was the only tricky part. You need the programm "boot\bootsect.exe" from the Installation Media. It also must be run on a non-UEFI booted OS (otherwise it cancels out).
I had a Windows 8 on a new Laptop so I had a UEFI booted system. Luckily I also had a VMWare Windows 7 lying around. I just assigned the Windows 7 ISO image to the Windows 7 VM, then connected the USB drive to the host.
Once you have the USB stick in a a proper Windows mount the Parttion you created under 1 under any driveletter (should happen automatically under Windows), and open a console as Administrator (asumes DVD is drivletter is D: and the USB stick's partition
ins Driveletter E:):
//Go into the boot directory on the Install DVD
D:
cd boot
//You should see a command promt like "D:\BOOT>"
//Run bootsect.exe
bootsect.exe /nt60 d:
Step 3 is to either copy the contents of the DVD media (copy and paste) or the Image (Mount into Virtual DVD Drive and copy/paste, unpack ISO images contents) into the partition.
How does this compare to other Distribution ways?
To DVD:
There is no need for a DVD drive. Even if a bootable USB-DVD drive is avalible, the Stick or Card will only need only USB port (most USB drives need 2 Ports due the 1 Ampere energy need of the drives).
Flash Media has no seek times and much better throughput (the old weakpoint of any Disk and DVD/CD in particular)
A FAT32 partition is inherently writeable. So modifications to the "Installation media" like Implementing Service Packs and other Windwos Updates, Modifying ei.cfg/preactivation/setup answer files, implementing special Disk/RAID drivers into the Windows
PE or adding stuff that should be installed with Windows is easy (and do not requrie reburning a 4 GiB Image file).
Since it only needs a 4 GiB partition, on a big USB stick there would still be place for other Data Partitions
Since it relies on old techniques (Generic Bootloader + Active Primary Partition + partition boot loader), multiple Installation media on a big enough stick might be feasible (with a more advanced bootloader like GRUB). Have to test that part.
However, the cost/media is a lot higher then a DVD. So if you need multiple Medias it will propably be cheaper to use the old DVD approach.
Due to the needs of bootsec.exe, first creating the media can be more difficulty then just burning an image. But once it is bootable this programm is no longer needed.
To PXE/network Distrubution:
If you have the nessesary setup already (DHCP/PXE Server, powerfull network), the USB stick is likely inferior. The USB stick should beat a 100 MBIT Network easily, but will propably be beaten by a 1 GBIT Network. Network isntallation uses existing infrastructure
(that you need for other reasons anyway) so the cost per media is even lower then the DVD.
The PXE way also has even better modifyability - sending out different answer files or even automatically booting different images based on the Compuers MAC adress are tried techniques.
If you lack the nessesary setup, the USB stick is a lot easier to implement and a lot easier to transport.
Advanced things:
Need to check if the partition could be formated as NTFS. I prefer a Journalling Filesystem for my USB-sticks.
Need to check if using a advanced boot manager techniques (like Grub or modifciations to the BCD of the Windows PE) allows me to put multiple install media on one Stick (with one primary partition per "media"). Especially combining the x32/x86 and
x64 Windows Installation Media would be worthwhile. As would be inlcuding a Window 8 or Vista installation media.
Current Step 3 and 2 can propably be switched. I see no reason bootsect could not run from the USB stick as it runs from the DVD (it only accesses the MBR and
VBR of the Disk, areas not in use by Windows)
Steps 1 through 3 might be possible from the Windows PE environment. If so, only a computer with legacy BIOS boot would be nessesary (no actuall installation).
Windows 7 can be installed on a (U)EFI system, but I have not checked if I can use the boot from teh stick on such a Computer. Latest for Windows 8 Media UEFI compatibilty is nessesary.
Let's talk about MVVM: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wpf/thread/b1a8bf14-4acd-4d77-9df8-bdb95b02dbe2 Please mark post as helpfull and answers respectively.

Advanced things:
Need to check if the partition could be formated as NTFS. I prefer a Journalling Filesystem for my USB-sticks.
Windows 7 can be installed on a (U)EFI system, but I have not checked if I can use the boot from teh stick on such a Computer. Latest for Windows 8 Media UEFI compatibilty is nessesary.
I converted the stick to NTFS using the convert.exe and it continued booting. So chances are high they only choose FAT32 in the example because no feature of NTFS was per nessesary in a "almost only reading" scenario like installation media.
The second part depends on the BIOS. I have a more advanced one where I can choose legacy boot options (like USB stick) in the boot option menu even when the default setting is UEFI, as long as I don't need Secure boot (wich I do not).
Another question arose: Windows 7 has the Kernel/BCD level ability to boot from .VHD Files. The only thing preventing version below corporate from using this feature is a license check that is run just before the login (so way after the booting has been
completed).
Starting with 3.0 Windows PE is based on the kernel of Windows 7. So the instlaltion system might have the ability to boot from .VHD too and might have no such check in place. If so, I could put both versions of the Windows 7 installer into .VHD, reducing the
need to have physical primary partitions for those.
Windows bootprocess vs. Linux boot process under BIOS:
The BIOS goes over all the boot media. If it finds one with a MBR, that one is executed and the BIOS part of the boot process is officially over.
-> Under Windows the MBR contains the "generic boot loader". A simple piece of code as old as BIOS (25 Years) that looks for the primary partition with "Active" Flag on "it's" disk. If it finds one, the Partition Boot Record of that parition is executed.
The MBR has done it's part
    -> NTLDR (NT too 2000), this one reads the boot.ini file and gives/executeds apropirate options
    -> BOOTMGR (Vista, 7), this one reads the BCD files
      -> Since Windows 7 BOOTMGR can also chainload the Partition Boot Record that is inside a .VHD File
    -> Wicher was used in Windows 3.X/95/98/ME
Higher versions can chainload lower versions, but must be designed for this and (re)installed in the proper "order".
The sometimes odd behavior that Windows 7 tries to keep 100 MiB in a seperate primary partition is there to have proper places for later additions to the BOOTMGR settings. Specifically it allows multiple BOOTMGR OS to use/edit the same BOOTMGR instace without
running into problems with "whose partition is active?" (since it is always the System Reserved one). It's not disimilar to having an extra /boot partition in Linux or how a GRUB's stage 2 works.
-> Under a typical Grub Legacy the MBR contains the Stage 1. It directly reads the Stage 2 from the proper partition/file system with a hardcoded path, but due to size limit of the MBR cannot do more. In some cases it starts a stage 1.5 wich has more
space to do work (63 sectors between MBR and first partition), but I never used this Setup
    -> Stage 2 loads the Grub Configuration from the disk. From here it depends on what OS you want to boot.
        -> For Linux or Unix the kernel is started directly.
        -> Any Windows OS up to 7 can be booted using the chainloader command. For the OS this is identical to having the partition choosen by the Generic Bootloader.
While it can be chainloaded by the Generic Bootloader from the active primary partition, GRUB and thus Linux has no
requirement for any Primary Partitions. Stage 1 is designed to directly access the specific File System containng the Stage 2. In fact it does not even need to reside on the same disk (as the Generic Bootloader has to).
If one does not need the Active Flag to control the Generic Bootloader (because a proper Stage 1 is installed in MBR) it is adviseable to mark wichever Windows Partition is chainloaded as active (up to Vista at least I had very odd behavior if the Windows boot
partition was not marked active, down to randomly shredded Partition boot managers).
After running a Windows Setup usually the Stage 1 has to be restored, as Windwos Setup will always write it's Generic Bootloader in the MBR. In order to get "rid" of a Grub all one has to do is overwrite the MBR with the Generic Bootloader and set the active
flag properly.
Let's talk about MVVM: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wpf/thread/b1a8bf14-4acd-4d77-9df8-bdb95b02dbe2 Please mark post as helpfull and answers respectively.

USB Stick Won't Appear on Desktop or Disk Utilities

Hi there,
One of my USB sticks doesn't seem to appear on my iMac. I have looked in disk utility and it doesn't appear there so I can't format it, and I have plugged it into another Mac and have had the same issue.
My external hard drive still appears and continues to back up using time machine, and I have tried the other USB ports in case one was faulty.
Has anyone come across this? Any tips?
Thanks a lot.

I have plugged it into another Mac and have had the same issue.
It is possible the stick has failed since you are having problems on 2 computers and not getting the correct response from what arthur suggested.

1,1 running Lion with XP Boot (re-install and what should i use for recovery disk or usb stick)?

i am trying to give my 1,1 mac pro a little love and would like to keep this machine running lion. i also have a boot camp installation of XP on it.
1. can anyone give me instructions on how/whether i can basically do a fresh install of Lion on this machine and minimize the system so it is not cluttered up with all my previous software etc, etc while still maintaining the original XP boot camp partition which i really need to have?
2. can anyone clarify for me what i should have on hand /if/ i need to boot into recovery mode or some other safe boot mode? i recently ran into an issue where i may have had to use the old Disk Utility format function and there was a reference to booting using the DVD install disks. however i am really confused as to what i should have on hand. ALSO the last time i had to do something on this machine i was told to boot into the Recovery Partition and it appears for some reason (perhaps because i had a "non-standard" windows 7 boot camp installation on the drive at the time??) that there was no recovery partition created when i upgraded to Lion.
- /anyway/ i am finding that i have the two ORIGINAL install disks for the mac pro on hand, a Max OS X Leopard and a mac OS X Snow Leopard DVD on hand but i am thinking that i should be creating some kind of USB stick similar to the one i created with yosemite? actually, i am not even sure what this USB stick for yosemite is for but i guess i can use it to boot into safe mode or something?
THANKS for any help as i'd like to get this business under control a little better in case i have an issue.
i'd also like to install Lion so that there is a Recovery Partition if possible and i think this may be possible if i don't have the windows 7 partition in the machine when i do a fresh install. any help would be great. thanks.

You have to go out of your way to build the Installer Disk yourself. But this tool makes it easy, and this site contains instructions:
http://diskmakerx.com
the bootable installer is basically to re-install the OS if i have to
Yes.
the recovery partition is somehow for fixing a problem
Recovery can go and get you the software and re-download it and start the Install, and allows the use of Disk Utility and can reset passwords.
or is there some overlap?
Yes. Both give you access to the Utilities that used to be on the Installer DVD. Disk Utility to Repair or initialize and a few other tools that can allow you to set up to install on an otherwise-bare disk or change your password.
is "Safe Mode" something completely different
Safe Mode is a way to start the fully-Installed Operating System in a special way. It first does one pass of Disk Utility (Repair Disk) against the Boot Drive. [Normally this would require booting from a different drive to make repairs.] Then it loads a minimal set of Apple-only kernel extensions, and uses a one-size-fits-all screen resolution. Then it demands your Username and password to proceed.
From there you can fix settings, use the Finder to add or delete things, and check operation with minimal extensions versus all your daily-use extensions. Very helpful for debugging extension conflicts and graphics settings problems, and fixing damaged settings. The next Restart builds a new extensions cache.

Reformat USB stick

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