FAT32 stands for File Allocation Table 32 (FAT32). It is a traditional file system, old as Windows 95 and originally developed to replace the older FAT16. You might have found that most flash drives or SD cards you purchased are formatted to be FAT32 by default. That's because FAT32 comes with maximum compatibility. With the FAT32 file system, the SD card can work well on all versions of Windows, Mac, Linux, game consoles, and anything with a working USB port.
Therefore, most users decide to format SD card to FAT32 file system via an SD Card FAT32 formatter so as to get incredible reading and writing compatibility with the widest range of devices.
I have a 128GB SD card and I tried to format it into FAT32. But Windows 10 Disk Management tool failed to complete this job because the drive is larger than 32GB. What can I do to solve this problem? Is there any specialized SD card Formatter FAT32 that can help?"
Basically, you can use Disk Management, File Explorer and Diskpart command prompt to format SD cards, pen drives,s or other devices to the FAT32 file system. But they can only work when the chosen disk partition is smaller than 32GB. That's because the Windows system does not support creating a FAT32 partition on a more than 32GB drive. And FAT32 can only be used to format drives between 2GB and 32GB with Windows native tools.
Although Windows built-in tools cannot format 32GB+ disk partition to FAT32, no need to be panic since a third-party powerful FAT32 format tool can help resolve this issue effectively. We'd like to recommend you try Qiling Disk Master Standard.
It is able to format large disk partition such as 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, and 2TB drive at most to FAT32 file system successfully in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7. Free download this SD card formatter fat32. Then, connect your SD card to your computer and follow the steps below to format the large partition to FAT32.
Now, let's see how to format an SD card to FAT32.
Step 1: Install and launch Qiling Disk Master, find and right-click the SD card to select Format Partition from the given list.
Step 2: Verify FAT32 under the File System tab .
▶ Note: you can set a partition label in order to better recognize your partitions in the future.
Step 3: In the main interface, click on Proceed to start the formatting process.
After finishing all the steps listed above, you will be able to successfully format the SD card to FAT32 in Windows, no matter how large it is. Morever, if the current file system of the SD card is NTFS, you can use "Convert to NTFS/FAT32" feature to directly convert the NTFS file system to FAT32 without formatting\losing data.
What's more, this SD card FAT32 formatter can also format the SD card from RAW to FAT32 if the SD card becomes RAW format due to a damaged file system.
With the free SD card formatter FAT32, you will be able to easily and successfully format 32GB+ SD cards to FAT32 in Windows 11,10,8,7. To perform this task in Server 2022/2019/2016/2012/2008/2003, you can try Qiling Disk Master Server, which is compatible with both Windows and Server OS.
It has more advanced functions like recovering missing partitions, migrating OS to SSD, converting (boot) disk between MBR and GPT without deleting partitions, etc.
How can I format my 64GB SD card to FAT32 for free?
You can only choose a third-party tool to format a 64GB SD card to FAT32 since Windows built-in tools don't support this task. Qiling Disk Master Standard is a free drive formatter, you can free download this tool and format your large drive into FAT32.
Why can't I format my SD card as FAT32?
There are many reasons that will cause this problem. The common reasons are SD card being locked; SD card being set to read-only; large storage SD card. And sometimes, Windows also doesn't recognize the file system of some SD card.
Is there any data loss during the formatting process?
Yes, formatting an SD card will erase all the data stored on it. Before proceeding with the formatting, ensure that you have backed up any important files or data from the SD card to a secure location.