How to Format a Flash Drive for a Mac

A USB flash drive ready to use.

A flash drive is a portable and easy-to-use external storage device that uses solid-state memory to store data. These devices are almost always connected to a computer via a USB port, although there are some flash drives that utilize a FireWire connection. Flash drives come in various sizes, shapes and colors. Flash drives have long since surpassed 3.5-inch floppy diskettes as the preferred way of quickly transferring data between computers.

Instructions

1. Open the "Disk Utilities" software by navigating to "Applications" and then "Utilities." There will be a column on the left side of the program window with a list of available storage devices. Find the flash drive to be formatted and click on it.

2. Click the "Erase" tab located to the right of the storage device list. This will bring up options for formatting the flash drive. Choose a format type from the drop-down menu next to "Volume Format." If the flash drive needs to be Windows-compatible, choose "MS-DOS (FAT)" from the list; otherwise, choose "Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)."

3. Type a name for the flash drive into the text field next to "Name." This can be any word or short phrase.

4. Click the "Security Options..." button near the bottom of the window. This lists four types of data erasing: "Don't Erase Data," "Zero Out Data," "7-Pass Erase" and "35-Pass Erase." Select an option, then press "OK."

5. Press the "Erase" button at the bottom of the program window. This will begin the formatting process. When complete, the flash drive will be ready to use.

References

• Everything USB: What is a flash drive?
• Mac Yourself: Reformat your USB flash drive to access its full storage capacity
• Macworld: Formatting a flash drive