Cant Format Usb Thumb Drive Mac Os

So you have some files that you don’t want anyone accessing. Your Mac is already pretty secure, but what happens when you want to encrypt a USB drive?

When using Disk Utility 16.3 with macOS Sierra to format a 'thumbdrive' USB 3 Lexar flash drive (64 gigs), when I choose a Format of ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’, I get a list of three Scheme item. Jul 24, 2015  Step 2: Format and make USB bootable. Plug USB into Macbook and run Disk Utility Select the USB drive in the left side Click on Erase Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format Apply. Go to Partition tab Select 1 Partition at Partition Layout. Change the name to Untitled 1 from Untitled Click on Option. Jul 22, 2019  Prepare Thumb Drive on OS X. If you only use a Mac computer, you can format your thumb drive so it can work on Windows systems. Connect the thumb drive to your Mac.

This is where disk encryption comes in. Basically, it’ll keep your USB thumb drive safe by encrypting the data on it and requiring a password to access it.

You may not know this, but macOS actually has a few built-in USB encryption features baked into its software — letting you encrypt and decrypt USB drives and other storage media on the fly. Here’s how to use them.

Contents

• 2 Leverage Disk Utility on macOS to encrypt USB drives
• 3 USB drive encryption that works with Windows PC and Mac

Related:

Use Finder to encrypt USB drives on MacBook

As of macOS Mojave, you can easily encrypt and decrypt generic mass storage devices on-the-go using Finder.

This uses XTS-AES encryption, which is the same type of encryption that the macOS FileVault 2 system uses. Keep in mind that using Finder to encrypt a thumb drive will restrict its usage to macOS. You won’t be able to access the data on it on a Windows or Linux machine.

• Plug your thumb drive or generic mass storage medium into your Mac.
• Open Finder.
• Right-click the thumb drive in the left sidebar. It’ll be under Locations
• Click on Encrypt “(Name of mass storage drive)”. If you don’t see this option, skip to the note below.
• Finder will now prompt you to enter a password and a hint. This will be used to access the data on your thumb drive — so don’t lose it!
• When all of that is typed in, click Encrypt Disk.

Finder will then encrypt your thumb drive. Depending on how much data is on it, the process could take a while.

To access the contents of the thumb drive, you’ll need to input the password that you created earlier. There’s absolutely no way to reset this password, so make sure you write it down in a safe place or use a password management platform.

Note: If you don’t see the Encrypt option when you right-click the thumb drive, it means that the USB storage device isn’t in the proper format to use the baked-in macOS encryption. You’ll need to use the following method to encrypt your drive.

Leverage Disk Utility on macOS to encrypt USB drives

As we covered, if you don’t see the Encrypt option, it means that your USB device hasn’t been formatted with a GUID partition map — which is a requirement for Finder encryption.

To get the encryption option, you’ll need to erase your thumb drive and then encrypt it in Disk Utility. Of course, make sure to copy all of the data from your USB drive to a safe location. Somewhere on your Mac’s internal disk is a good option. Once your data is somewhere safe, you can go about actually erasing and encrypting your flash drive.

• Open Disk Utility. You’ll find it in Applications —> Utilities in Finder or in the Utilities folder in Launchpad.
• In the top Disk Utility menu bar, click on View.
• Now, select the Show All Devices option to check it if it isn’t ticked already.
• Select your USB thumb drive from the left-hand sidebar. Make sure to click on the top option, not any subsequent device names listed underneath it.
• Click the Erase option in the Disk Utility toolbar.
• Give your USB thumb drive a new name.
• Under the Scheme menu, make sure you have GUID Partition Map selected. You’ll need to change this before selecting the Format. Which brings us to…
• Under the Format menu, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted).

From here, you’ll be prompted to input a password and hint again. Like with the Finder method, you’ll want to keep this in a safe place because there’s no option to reset it. When you’re done, click on Erase.

When all is said and done, copy all of the data that was originally on your thumb drive back from the safe location. Once it’s on the drive, it’ll automatically be encrypted and password-protected.

Alternate method

Alternatively, you can also set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the Scheme to GUID Partition Map. This won’t encrypt your USB drive within Disk Utility, but it will allow you to encrypt it using the simple Finder method.

This may be the preferred option if you don’t want to commit to an encrypted drive and password immediately, but you want to be able to encrypt your storage medium on-the-go later on using Finder.

USB drive encryption that works with Windows PC and Mac

The above two methods will make sure that your data is safe and protected no matter what happens. But, of course, they’ll only work on macOS devices. This is because the Mac OS Extended format, true to its name, is only compatible with Apple computers.

If you need to access your data from a Windows PC or a Linux machine, then you’ll want to opt for a third-party encryption solution. A couple of high-quality options are DiskCryptor and VeraCrypt.

They’re both completely free to use and open source, but they don’t skimp on the encryption quality. In fact, both apps offer a variety of different encryption options — such as AES, Twofish and Serpent.

You can’t go wrong with either. They’re both also fairly simple to use, so we’ll refrain from offering any in-depth instructions on how to encrypt using them. Just make sure to encrypt your drive using a Windows- or Linux-compatible format like FAT32.

For more information, you can visit their respective websites.

If you use USB drives to carry information, it is always a good idea to encrypt the drive so that your privacy and security is protected in the case you lose the drive. This is particularly true if you use thumb drives to store personal photos or contract documents etc. We hope that you find these tips helpful. Please let us know in the comments below if you have any questions for us.

Mike is a freelance journalist from San Diego, California.

While he primarily covers Apple and consumer technology, he has past experience writing about public safety, local government, and education for a variety of publications.

He’s worn quite a few hats in the journalism field, including writer, editor, and news designer.

Jun 11, 2013  How to manually enable NTFS read and write in OS X. Do you have an external hard drive formatted to NTFS that you would like to use with your Mac? Feb 08, 2020  The problem is that on macOS, you can’t work with files saved on an NTFS drive unless you use a paid app like Paragon NTFS for Mac. How to Format an External Drive for Mac (from NTFS to Mac OS Extended) Note: The tutorial and screenshots below are based on macOS Sierra 10.12.5. They might be different if your Mac has a different version. Nov 19, 2019  It can easily be installed and allows free upgrades for life. Using the software to transfer files between Mac and NTFS drive, as well as writing on NTFS drives, is easy. It is compatible with Mac OS X 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, 10.11 and macOS 10.12, 10.13, 10.14 and 10.15. The utility is also very affordable, and a seven days trial is offered for its. Mar 15, 2018  Most Mac users will be better off formatting external drives with exFAT, ensuring they work well on both Windows and Mac OS X without any extra work. If you must write to an NTFS drive, one of the paid, third-party drivers will be the easiest option.

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Jun 08, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions

USB drives, pen drives, or thumb drives – no matter what you call them, they all perform the same job related to data storage and management. In a matter of a few years, pen drives have drastically replaced CDs and other storage units. Now, we all use USB drives to transfer our data or maintain its backup. Though, there are times when we wish to format pen drive on Mac. You can do it to erase drive data, troubleshoot a problem, reformat it, and do so much more.

Since Mac gives a one-stop solution to do it all, you won’t face any problem like pen drive not formatting on Mac. To further help you, we have come up with this detailed guide on how to format pen drive on Mac with other related solutions.

Part 1. What is a Pen Drive or Thumb Drive?

Thumb drives (which are also known as USB or flash drives) are extensively used to store data via USB connectivity. As almost all the computers (be it Windows or Mac) have a universal USB slot, it makes the use of flash drives so effortless. You can just plug it into any system and access the stored content in no time. A pen drive can also be used as an installer at times or to maintain a backup of your data.

• You might like to erase all the data present on your pen drive at once.
• Formatting can also help you troubleshoot certain connectivity issues with your flash drive.
• If the USB drive has been infected by a malware, then formatting it can fix the issue at times.
• It can also help you reformat the pen drive and change its file system as well.
• It will let you defragment the drive and make more free space in it.

Part 2. How to Format Pen Drive on Mac

Just like Windows, Mac also allows a seamless solution to do pen drive format. To do this, you can take the assistance of Disk Utility, which is a dedicated system component in Mac. It can help you manage system partitions, erase an external unit like a thumb drive, and even repair your disk. To learn how to format a pen drive in Mac, you can follow these simple steps:

1. Firstly, connect your flash drive to the Mac by inserting it to the correct USB slot. Also, go to Mac’s Finder > Applications > Utilities and launch “Disk Utility” from here.
2. As the Disk Utility window would open, you can view the connected pen drive labeled under the “External” devices on the left. Simply select your pen drive to view its storage settings on the right.
3. In order to format the pen drive, you need to click on the “Erase” button on its toolbar.
4. This will open the following pop-up menu. From here, you can change the name of the pen drive, its format, and scheme. There are different kinds of formats available for thumb drives, which are discussed later in this post.
5. Lastly, you can change the scheme for the connected pen drive as well. While GUID and Master Boot support both Windows and Mac, the Apple Partition Map would only run on Mac.
6. After making the appropriate selections, just click on the “Erase” button, and wait for the pen drive to be formatted entirely.

That’s it! In the end when you are informed that the thumb drive has been successfully formatted, you can unmount it safely from your Mac.

Let's get the ways of formatting USB to FAT32 together.

 

Video Tutorial on How to Format a USB Flash Drive on Mac

 

Part 3. How to Check the Pen Drive Format

A lot of users choose to format pen drive to change its format. If you also have the same requirements, then consider checking the existing pen drive format first. Chances are that it might be of an ideal format beforehand. Here’s how you can check the format of thumb drive on Mac.

1. Simply attach the pen drive to your Mac by inserting it into the USB slot.
2. Launch Finder once the pen drive is detected by Mac. You can see its dedicated icon on the left panel.
3. Select your pen drive from here and right-click to get its context menu. Click on the “Get Info” option to proceed.
4. This will display a pop-up with crucial details related to the connected pen drive. Here, you can view the format of the selected USB drive.

While formatting a pen drive, users get an option to change its format. Ideally, Mac supports different pen drive formats for a USB drive that you can pick from, as per your convenience.

• ExFAT: The Extended FAT is one of the most common formats out there. It works smoothly on every major platform like Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, and even Linux.
• FAT: While the File Allocation Table format also supports cross-platform compatibility, it is not as reliable as exFAT. For instance, it supports the maximum file size of 4 GB. Ideally, it is best-suited for systems with FAT32.
• OS X (Journaled): This is the traditional native file format for macOS, which is commonly known as the HFS+ format. Apart from storing data, it can also be used as a Time Machine backup.
• OS X (Case-sensitive, Journaled): This is similar to the previous option, with a case-sensitive feature. Although Mac is not case-sensitive, systems like UNIX are.
• OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted): If you want to protect your thumb drive, then go for this option. It is similar to the OS X Journaled version with encryption. That is, users are required to authenticate (via password) to access it.
• OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted): This is an encrypted and case-sensitive version of OS X Journaled.

Part 4. How to Remove History on Mac Firefox

By now, you must be able to reformat thumb drive on Mac without any trouble. If you are finding it hard to access the pen drive content on Mac, then don’t worry. The operating system is pretty user-friendly and will let you access the connected pen drive without any trouble.

1. Firstly, make sure that the pen drive has been properly inserted on your Mac’s USB slot. As soon as the pen drive is detected, you will get its shortcut on the desktop. Just double-click it, or right-click and open it.
2. Alternatively, you can also access the USB drive content via Finder as well. Go to Mac’s desktop and click on Finder > File > New Finder Window. This will open a new Finder Window on your Mac.
3. On the left sidebar, you can see all the shortcuts and partitions. Under the “Devices” or “External” tab, you can see your pen drive’s icon. Just double-click it to open its file system.
4. In the end, after when you have finished working with the pen drive, you can unmount it. Select the pen drive’s icon and right-click it to get its context menu. Click on the Eject option to safely remove it.

Part 5. How to Recover Deleted History on Mac

If you are lucky, then you would be able to format pen drive on Mac without facing any setback. Though, chances are that you might get the “Pen Drive Not Formatting” error on Mac as well. Try following these simple yet smart solutions to fix the pen drive not formatting issue on Mac.

• Reinsert the USB drive

If you have not properly inserted the USB drive to Mac, then you might encounter this issue. To fix this, just remove the pen drive and clean the USB slot on your Mac. After a while, insert it once again, and check if it has been detected or not.

Hard drive broke on mac os x. First your problem is probably a damaged Hard Drive/IR cable. They get damaged as the cable comes over the last step when climbing the steps. I usually put small pads on either side ode of the cable to help prevent it. It is called a GUID format and you can use Disk Utilities and give it one partition to get it them format MAC OS X extended. It should only take a minute or two for the drive to be erased and reformatted. Now your drive is ready for OS X. Install OS X. There are two ways you can install OS X on to your external hard disk: by reinstalling OS X from the OS X Utilities repair screen or by downloading OS X. Pick the drive you wish to use to start up the Mac. For more advice about installing macOS or Mac OS X read How to update the Mac operating system and How to install old versions of OS X on a Mac. Sep 06, 2019  In this article, we’ve given detailed instructions for each method. So, it doesn’t matter if you want a clean slate on a second-hand MacBook or if you replaced the drive in your age-old machine, we’ve got you covered.Simply follow the instructions below to install the latest compatible version of macOS or OS X on your new hard drive. For Mac OS X 10.6 and earlier, you will need the OEM installer disc. For Mac OS X 10.7 and later, you can use the recovery partition on the original drive. To make sure you have a functional recovery partition, restart your computer and immediately hold down the Command + R keys until the Apple logo appears. If your computer boots into a four.

• Reinsert the USB drive

If you have not properly inserted the USB drive to Mac, then you might encounter this issue. To fix this, just remove the pen drive and clean the USB slot on your Mac. After a while, insert it once again, and check if it has been detected or not.

• Check the format

Some formats of the pen drive, like NTFS are not supported by Mac. You can go to the thumb drive’s properties to view its format. In case if it has an NTFS format, then you need to use a third-party tool to access it or format the flash drive on Windows instead.

• Fix the USB drive

There might be some problem with the USB drive storage as well. In order to fix this, go to Mac’s Applications and launch Disk Utility on it. Select the connected pen drive and click on the “First Aid” option from its toolbar. This will check the USB storage and would try to fix its file system as well.

• Reset PRAM

The Parameter Random Access Memory on Mac can also lead to the pen drive not formatting issue. Luckily, it can easily be fixed by restarting Mac. Power it off or simply restart it from the Finder. While Mac is restarting, press the Command + Option + P + R keys at the same time to reset its PRAM.

• Update macOS

If your Mac is running on an outdated version, then it might encounter compatibility issues with the connected pen drive. The easiest way to update its drivers and firmware is by upgrading it to a stable version. Just click on the Apple menu on Finder and select “Software Update”. This will make your system look for the recent macOS update that is compatible with it.

Part 6. How to Perform Pen Drive Data Recovery on Mac

Sometimes, users end up formatting a pen drive by mistake as well. If you also have accidentally deleted data on Mac or have formatted a pen drive, then take the assistance of Recoverit Data Recovery Mac. Developed by Wondershare, it is one of the most advanced and trusted data recovery tools for Mac. The latest update of Recoverit 8.0 has been released that is equipped with tons of high-end features. You can now recover all kinds of data from Mac or a pen drive with a single click.

• Using Recoverit 8.0, you can get back your lost photos, videos, documents, compressed files, and numerous kinds of data easily.
• The application is known to produce exceptional results in less time. It also features a user-friendly and intuitive interface that does not require any prior technical knowledge.
• It supports data recovery on all types of USB drives. This includes pen drives from brands like Kingston, SanDisk, Sony, HP, Samsung, and more. Also, it supports leading file formats like NTFS, HFS, FAT, exFAT, etc.
• The interface will let you preview the extracted data first. Later, users can selectively save their files to a location of their choice.
• Recoverit supports data recovery under every possible scenario like formatted drive, accidental deletion, malware attack, and so on.

If you want to perform pen drive data recovery using Wondershare Recoverit 8.0, then simply follow these basic steps:

Step 1: Connect your USB drive and select it

Firstly, connect your pen drive to your Mac and make sure it is detected by it successfully. Subsequently, launch Wondershare Recoverit 8.0 and pick a location to scan. In this case, it will be the connected USB drive. If you want, you can browse to a specific location as well.

Step 2: Scan for any lost content

During the data recovery process, you are expected to wait for it to be completed. The interface will let you know the progress on the screen. Kindly don’t disconnect the pen drive from Mac as of now to get better results.

Cant Format Usb Thumb Drive Mac Os X

Step 3: Recover your data

In the end, when the data recovery process is completed, you will be notified. Now, you can preview your photos, videos, and documents on the interface and select the files of your choice. Click on the “Recover” button and save them to a trusted location. It is recommended not to save them back to the USB drive.

Conclusion

By following this informative guide, you would certainly be able to format pen drive on Mac. Apart from that, we have also discussed ways to fix issues like pen drive not formatting as well. Though, if you have accidentally formatted your flash drive, then take the assistance of Recoverit Data Recovery. Being one of the best data recovery tools, it will certainly help you in an unforeseen data loss scenario. You can download its freely available version and keep it handy to do pen drive data recovery during any unwanted situation.

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