Format a New Drive

Format a New Drive

1. Connect the new drive to your computer.
2. Click the Windows icon in the lower-left corner of your
screen and select Computer.
3. In the Computer window that appears, right-click the
drive you want to format and choose Format from the
context menu.
4. Name the drive and select the file system you want to
use.
• Select either the FAT or FAT32 option for smaller
flash drives or drives you’ll use on both Mac and
Windows systems.
You can use FAT only on drives that are 2 gigabytes or smaller, and
you can use FAT32 only on drives that are 32 gigabytes or smaller.
Larger drives must use the NTFS file system.
• Use NTFS for larger drives that will stay on Windows
systems.
5. Click Start and format the drive.
You must format a new drive to use it on a computer, but the formatting process totally erases the drive. Do not format a drive you
haven’t backed up yet.